Is your smart phone infected with malware?

An informal survey suggests that 18 percent of smart phones may be infected with viruses and spyware. Is yours? How would you know?

The poll is unscientific, and only 540 people had responded by July 12, which Carboni admits "is not a particularly large sample."However, he added, "I have been monitoring the statistics as responses are entered and the percentage of people reporting they found malware consistently ranged from 15-20 [percent] so 18.1 [percent] seems to be a reasonable number. Likewise the percentage of people who were not scanning ranged consistently from 82-86 [percent]. Based on those numbers, 83 of the 457 people who responded who were not looking for malware would be infected. Ouch."Kelly Jackson Higgins, writing on the , reported that malware targeting smart phones is a rapidly growing threat. The number of malware and spyware programs found on the phones has doubled in the first half of 2010, Higgins wrote on June 7. "Even more worrisome [than the sheer number] is how rapidly these threats are hitting smart phones in comparison to the desktop," Higgins continued. "What took 15 years to evolve with the desktop machine is happening practically overnight in mobile handsets, security experts say."Smart phones, as any user knows, can store vital personal information, including payment data, passwords and stored e-mail and text messages.

Is there malicious software running on your smart phone?

Would you know about it if there were?

Chris Carboni, writing a blog entry for the SANS Institute's Internet Storm Center, isn't sure you would know. ISC launched an online poll in June that allowed readers to report their experiences with malware on mobile devices. So far, as of July 12, Carboni reported that the poll shows:

  • Only 15.3 percent of readers are scanning mobile devices for malware.
  • Of those who are, however, 18.1 percent are finding it.
  • But 84.6 percent are not even looking.





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