Cell Phones can get Viruses too

Cell Phones can get Viruses too

Computer Security

A few years ago the very first cell phone virus hit. It was no big deal and it did not carry out any malicious actions. A group of virus writers decided to give it a shot and see if it could be done then they forwarded it to the anti virus researchers and they began to work on the problem that is guaranteed to get much worse.

Cell phone viruses are barely even spoken of and most people will say that they have never even heard of them before but the future promises that there will be cell phone viruses that will be just as crippling as computer viruses. In terms of what a cell phone virus is, it is the same thing as a computer virus, an unwanted file that infects your cell phone and replicates itself to other devices. However, a computer virus spreads through email attachments and Internet downloads, a cell phone virus will spread through internet downloads, multimedia messaging service attachments, and Bluetooth transfers. Right now most cell phone viruses come from bogus internet downloads but trailing right behind is the ability to infect phone to phone.

The Symbian operating system accounts currently for almost all of the phone to phone viruses. Because there are so many cell phone service providers is the main reason that the cell phone virus problem has yet to manifest itself. Just give the virus writers a little more time to figure this one out. Another problem that the computer virus writers might be having a difficult time with is the fact that in order to get a cell phone infected, the user has to choose to open a message attachment and download it. Facing these two critical obstacles has left virus writers in dismay as they have yet to succeed.

The only phones that will be at risk are the Smart phones with a Bluetooth connection. Viruses will attack through internet downloads, Bluetooth connections, and MMS. In all of these methods of attack, the virus writer has to get the user to agree to run the infected file one or sometimes even two times but they are up to that challenge as again they will disguise it as something that is sure to catch your eye.

Once in and infected, the cell phone virus is certain to do some damage. It will likely delete all of your contact information and your calendar in your cell phone and send infected messages to all of the contacts that you have. Further, it could lock up some of your phone features or just crash your entire cell phone making it unusable. To date, there have been five recognized cell phone viruses and the last one disabled infected cell phones entirely. The pattern has been that each cell phone virus has gotten worse which will likely be the future pattern as well.

Prevention is the best cure and you should prevent viruses from infecting your cell phone in pretty much the same fashion as you would for your computer.