The Victim: Your Smartphone!
When asked why do they rob banks some wiseass crook said “cause that’s where the money is”, so now that it’s revealed that modern-day Hacker types are busy targeting the smartphones of unwary victims. We do not need to ask why. it is simple, because ”that’s where the action is, and where our personal data lives”.
Security researchers are steadily uncovering new strains of software aimed at smartphones that more often than not run Google’s Android OS but the problem is not exclusive to Android. These malicious applications do a wide range of strange things we are victimized by. They can log details about incoming and outgoing phone calls, some can even record those calls. Researchers recently discovered a security hole in Apple.’s iPhones, which subsequently prompted the German government to warn Apple about their concerns about the threat.
Leading security experts worldwide are saying that the frequency and maliciousness of attacks on smartphones are growing at an alarming rate and that attackers are becoming increasingly smarter and more adept at developing new techniques and exploiting target victims.
The bad guys are even developing business models around this “opportunity”. None of this is new. Evil-doers have for decades infected personal computers with malicious software and malware, . Now, they are redirecting their nefarious activities to our smartphones and related mobile devices such as the popular and newer tablet form factor.
As more adults in society across all cultural and economic sectors now own mobile phones and organize and center our digital lives on one device, thus become the major attraction to criminals and exploiters.
As smartphones are getting ever more intelligent becoming digital wallets, photo albums, credit cards, email lockboxes and info repositories the holes and vulnerabilities are open up and create new angles for attacks and abuse.
Some of the worst programs being reported with increasing frequency causes a victim’s phone to rack up unwanted service charges, record calls, intercept text messages, revealing passwords and dump emails, photos and other private content and information directly onto criminals’ servers.
Strong convincinf evidence of this all-out hacker invasion is quickly emerging. What is clear at this point is that all of the mobile platforms are affected, however, Android devices are vulnerable and are getting the most attention at this early stage. All smartphone
Users should use caution and pay attention to what you download and what or who you expose yourself to.