More thieves & con artists are eavesdropping on smartphone calls and logging text messages.
LAS VEGAS — Hackers are out to stymie your smartphone.
Last week, security researchers uncovered yet another strain of malicious software aimed at smartphones that runGoogle's popular Android operating system. The application not only logs details about incoming and outgoing phone calls, it also records those calls.
That came a month after researchers discovered a security hole inApple Inc.'s iPhones, which prompted the German government to warn Apple about the urgency of the threat.
Security experts say attacks on smartphones are growing fast — and attackers are becoming smarter about developing new techniques.
"We're in the experimental stage of mobile malware where the bad guys are starting to develop their business models," said Kevin Mahaffey, co-founder of Lookout Inc., a San Francisco-based maker of mobile security software.
Some 38 percent of American adults now own aniPhone, BlackBerry or other mobile phone that runs the Android, Windows or WebOS operating systems, according to data from Nielsen. That's up from just 6 percent who owned a smartphone in 2007 when the iPhone was released and catalyzed the industry. The smartphone's usefulness, allowing people to organize their digital lives with one device, is also its allure to criminals.
All at once, smartphones have become wallets, email lockboxes, photo albums and Rolodexes. And because owners are directly billed for services bought with smartphones, they open up new angles for financial attacks. The worst programs cause a phone to rack up unwanted service charges, record calls, intercept text messages and even dump emails, photos and other private content directly onto criminals' servers.
"Bad guys go where the money is," said Charlie Miller, principal research consultant with the Accuvant Inc. security firm, and a prominent hacker of mobile devices. "As more and more people use phones and keep data on phones, and PCs aren't as relevant, the bad guys are going to follow that. The bad guys are smart. They know when it makes sense to switch."
When it comes to security, smartphones share a problem with PCs: Infections are typically the responsibility of the user to fix, if the problem is discovered at all.
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http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/sns-ap-us-tec-securing-smartphones,0,7593488.story