According to McAfee, mobile threats will continue to grow in 2007 as platform convergence continues. The use of smartphone technology has played a pivotal role in the threat’s transition from multifunction, semi-stationary PCs to palm-sized “wearable” devices. With increased connectivity through BlueTooth, SMS, instant messaging, email, WiFi, USB, audio, video and Web, there are more possibilities for cross device contamination.
In 2006 we saw efforts by mobile malware authors to achieve PC-to-phone and phone-to-PC infection vectors. Current phone-to-PC vectors remain primitive in nature at this time, such as infecting via removable memory cards. However, McAfee expects that this next stage will be achieved in 2007.
SMiShing, which involves taking the techniques of phishing by email and porting them to SMS, is also expected to increase in prevalence.
In addition, for-profit mobile malware is expected to increase in 2007. While most of the malware Avert Labs has run across includes relatively simple Trojan horses, the outlook has changed with the J2ME/Redbrowser Trojan. J2ME/Redbrowser is a Trojan horse program that pretends to access Wireless Access Protocol (WAP) web pages via SMS messages. In reality, instead of retrieving WAP pages, it sends SMS messages to Premium Rate numbers, thus costing the user more than intended. A second J2ME, Wesber, appearing in late 2006, also sends out messages to a premium SMS number.
Late 2006 saw a flurry of spy-ware offerings in the mobile world. Most are designed to monitor phone-numbers and SMS call-logs, or to steal SMS messages by forwarding copies to another phone. One spyware in particular, SymbOS/Flexispy.B, is able to remotely activate the microphone of the victim’s device, allowing someone to eavesdrop upon that person. Other spyware can activate the camera. McAfee expects that the offerings of commercial spyware targeting mobile devices to grow in 2007.