An antivirus vendor recently discovered a new mobile malware called Transmitter.C late last month. The new mobile malware spreads via SMS with erotic messages to tempt users to click onto the link within the message. Once you click, the malware will download and install itself onto your phone without your knowledge. Plus, there won’t be any saucy pictures or videos to watch.
Within minutes, the infected phone will send out hundreds of messages to random numbers and the next person who clicks on the link will be another host, thus becoming a pandemic. Infected users will see a significant jump in their phone bills and subscriptions to unknown mobile services.
More often that not, anti virus vendors are accused of playing up the issue to push sales. Whereas platform architecture developers claimed that they are also improving overall security on their end. So should regular Joes be worried?
“Last year there were only two to three signature updates every week, right now about 10 to 15 updates are being released every week,” said Sergey Nevstruev at the launch of the new Kaspersky mobile solution. Currently, there are more than 1,000 signatures on Kaspersky Mobile Security for Symbian and Windows Mobile.
He mentioned that a similar threat took place in Indonesia early this year where cyber criminals conducted money transfers using a Java app from infected mobile devices. The latest version of Kaspersky Mobile Security v8 is improved with features including anti-theft, enhanced firewall, anti-spam and so on.
GPS tracking
The anti-theft protection is now enhanced with GPS, allowing mobile users to receive an SMS or email with GPS coordinates to locate their phones on Google Maps. In the past, users could only remotely block or clean data on the lost or stolen mobile device while with this new feature, it allows you to actually know where your phone is.
“The whole process of getting the coordinates takes up to 20 minutes, but in most cases it takes only three to five minutes. Mobile users could choose to receive the coordinates via email and it works even on phones without email support,” added Sergey.
For phones without Internet capability or email, the software will send out an SMS to Kaspersky’s international gateway server, which will then convert that SMS to an email. The function also allows parents to locate their children via GPS if anti virus is installed on the phone. However, GPS will only work outdoors or in places with little skyscrapers. Sergey said that they are looking at making this feature working on A-GPS.
File encryption
Another new feature in Kaspersky Mobile Security 8 is the file encryption feature. Users can now encrypt any folders on their phone or memory card using the 128-bit encryption. Sergey said that files are decrypted over the air when the user opens the file. The encryption requires password and will still work even if the memory card is removed from the phone.
Blacklist voice call
Kaspersky Lab has improved the anti-spam module with voice blocking feature on top of its SMS blocking function. With the new call blacklisting function, users can now accept calls and messages only from specified contacts (white list) or accept calls and messages from all numbers except those blacklisted.
More mobile malware
Sergey said that mobile malware would continue to grow in the future as users store more data on the phone. He said the upcoming Kaspersky Mobile Security 9 will have more improvement and more features with support for more mobile operating system. The Kaspersky Mobile Security 8 retails at RM79 and currently works on Symbian and Windows Mobile platform including Symbian OS 9.1, 9.2, 9.3 and Windows Mobile 5.0 and above.
