ARE SMARTPHONES SAFE?

By D.E.Levine

The recent Cisco 2009 Midyear Security Report states that the criminal underworld works together to understand and take advantage of the evolving behaviors of the very demographic they are trying to undermine and fleece.

By working together criminals are adapting to the new economy and are continually finding new ways to exploit people with mobile phones, through social networks and text messaging. As part of their strategy criminals often seize upon current events to dupe people into phishing scams or to spam advertising.

Also noted in the report, was the use of SMS text messages as an attack vector. Since the beginning of 2009 at least two to three new campaigns targeting mobile devices have surfaced every week. Cisco says that users have not learned to be wary of audio scams and frequently fall prey to them.

While SMS attacks are new in the U.S. they are more common in other countries such as Japan. This is because the technology has been popular in those countries much longer and is more pervasive.

A new technique called "smishing" is predicted to increase in the future. During a smishing attack, a phishing link is sent to a smartphone that is sophisticated enough to allow the recipient to click on the link contained in the text message. Evidently, this area is a irresistible to criminals and they find it challenging enough to expend considerable time and energy into developing new scams.