Smartphones under siege come 2009

 

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By Asavin Wattanajantra

Posted on 23 Dec 2008 at 16:56

Kaspersky is predicting that 2009 will be the year when smartphones come under serious attack from malware writers.

The security vendor claims that with the increased dominance of 3G connections and the lower security barriers, smartphones will begin to be "compromised and corralled" into botnets, just as has happened with desktop PCs and laptops.

In the longer term the company predicts that "in five years time - at the latest - mobile malware will sadly have become part of daily life."

There was a hint of good news as Kaspersky predicted that next year would see the demise of malware spread via email. The company claims spam filters have now become very efficient at filtering junk out, and computer users "savvier" when it comes to infected email attachments.

However, this may be cold comfort given the preponderance of web-based threats, such as the Internet Explorer 7 exploit that caused 10,000 websites to be infected in just over a week.