Pocket PC is next year's target for viruses
Pocket PC is next year's target for viruses
Dec 20, 2004: Despite 2004 being a good year on record for catching virus writer and cyber criminals, with authorities in many countries completing big arrests, pocket PCs could be next year's big target for hackers.
Open Systems Australia, the distributor for F-Secure Corporation in Australia, has released a summary which reveals that the first half of this year experienced a record-breaking number of virus outbreaks, passing the 100,000 mark. However, after June, less outbreaks were recorded.
Microsoft started offering bounties for the writers of certain viruses already in late 2003. These bounties have put pressure on virus writers, making them afraid of others ratting them out.
Authorities in several countries completed big operations this year to arrest online criminals. For example, the US Secret Service shut down the carderplanet.cc and shadowcrew.com sites, which were used to trade stolen credit card numbers online.
There have also been several arrests of people from Russian, Lithuanian and Ukrainan origins, who have been found behind the phishing attacks in USA, UK and Australia.
Anthony Steele, the product manager for Open Systems Australia, the Australian distributor for F-Secure Corporate, explained why Pocket PCs would be the next big target.
"We offer solutions to protect pocket PCs, but not many vendors offers software to guard these devices from attacks. As these devices become more popular over the course of next year, virus writers will start to target this technology more and more.
"It has so much functionality, including storing important office documents, the ability to send and receive emails and have access to the Internet. It is only a matter to time before it becomes a main target for attack, but most companies seem to be turning a blind eye to this threat."
In addition, Mikko Hypponen, the director of anti-virus research at F-Secure, explains how the virus writers are evolving their tactics all of the time. "We don't see many directly destructive viruses nowadays; most viruses just try to silently take over your machine instead.
"Current email systems are slowly dying. I'm afraid we need to do a major overhaul of email itself in the near future. This would mean changing the basic protocols to more robust ones and adding strong user authentication.
"This would be a massive and very expensive project...which means it won't be done until the current email systems simply stop working."
Steele added that the authorities are not doing enough to protect people from the abuse of viruses and spyware, so this is why anti-virus vendors need to stay ahead of the curve and offer solutions that be pro-active instead of reactive.
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