Securing Cell Phones Technology Review (08/01/07) Greene, Kate
as it appeared in the August 1, 2007 edition of ACM TechNews.
The recent hack of Apple's iPhone by researchers at a security company should serve as a warning to all mobile device manufacturers that there is a growing need for better mobile device security, experts say. Cell-phone viruses have existed for about a decade, buy many experts believe that threats to mobile devices could become far more significant and dangerous over the next few years because of mobile devices' growing computing power, popularity, and complexity. "I think a large part of this is that cell phones are becoming miniature computers," says University of California, Berkeley computer science professor David Wagner, "and as a consequence, they are starting to inherit some of the same problems that we face with PCs." While using available security tools such as anitivirus software is an option, cell phones have their own unique problems. Some security companies have introduced products for mobile phones, but these solutions have limited functionality to avoid draining the battery too much, says NEC's Anand Raghunathan. Problems associated with battery life and processing power can be avoided in some cases by running security software on the cell-phone carrier infrastructure, but Raghunathan believes the best solution for mobile device security is hardware-based security solutions, such as an extra processor and memory that are hardwired for specific tasks. Such a system would divide the phone into two environments, one the user has access to and includes the applications, while the other is designed to be impenetrable to viruses and malicious software that stores passwords and other critical information. If a virus were to be downloaded to a device with this system, it would be unable to access any information, and if the phone were lost or stolen the carrier could access the secure environment remotely and shut down the phone. Click Here to View Full Article
