Mobile Devices Attacks

Mobile Devices Attacks

Introduction

Today, competitive technology has transformed our world. The ingredient of mobility has an apparent presence in our everyday life. Telecommunication technologies have experienced a rapid advancement in the last two decades along with Next Generation Networks. Since then Mobile devices have become a multi-purpose device. Its use is not restricted to supplementing communication. A mobile device serves many functions such as Image capturing device, media player, Radio, Navigator, and pocket PC. Today, people prefer to access internet through Mobile instead of PCs or laptops. This attitude has welcomed mobile attacks more than ever. It is essential to identify sources of mobile attacks, and examine the context from varying perspectives. The research explores recent mobile attacks, and projects future trends of the context. Moreover, a thorough investigation is presented over the involved technologies. A brief back ground is presented to establish context for attacks on mobile devices.

Discussion

Background

The term “Mobile Technology” highlights the nature of technology that is “Portability”. Many technologists believe that there are drawbacks of going “mobile”. Mobile devices can expose users' data to unauthorized people. The situation becomes complicated when it comes to unauthorized invasion to organizations' valuable data. Mobile Phone platforms are prone to malicious attacks either from network, and physical compromise (NSA Report, 2012). The usage of smart phones has increased as they offer advanced capabilities similar to PCs. Smart phones are relatively easy targets for attackers as these phones have lax security. According to Trend Micro Report, smart phones outsold PCs in the year 2011. For that matter, attackers have targeted this expanded market with a combination of old and new techniques (US-CERT Report 2011). Mobile devices like tablets, pocket pc, smart phones, and PDAs are susceptible to mobile threats. These mobile devices offer mobile access to internet, email, GPS navigation, and other such applications. It should be noted that smart phones' security does not match with strict security of computers. Firewalls, antivirus programs, and encryption techniques are some of the technical security measures uncommon to mobile phones. Further, mobile phones operating systems do not go through frequent updates. With social networking becoming common, few people realize that mobile social networking applications offer lesser privacy controls than their PC counterparts. A large number of users fail to recognize the importance of security software which comes with their mobile devices. Users believe that they can surf the internet on their mobile devices securely similar to surfing experience on PCs. Users keep sensitive information on their smart phones and this is what makes them easy targets. Mobile commerce allows users to make transactions such as purchasing goods, buying travel tickets, banking transactions and redeeming coupons.

Mobile Devices Attacks

The most common form of attacks comes from the following sources:

Loss & Theft

Malware

Spam & Phishing

Bluetooth & Wifi

Malware

Trend Micro discovered at least 5000 new malicious Android apps in the last quarter of 2012 (www.ibm.com). Most mobile platforms have no resident solution for detecting malware. Viruses, worms, Trojans, and spyware are some of the common mobile device ...