As cellphones become more like computers, they become more vulnerable to the kinds of problems experienced by computer users — namely, viruses. And while cellphone viruses are not as prevalent in the West as their computer-based counterparts, they do pose an increasing risk.

“I had a worm on my phone only once,” says Roel Schouwenberg, a senior anti-virus researcher at Moscow-based Kaspersky Lab, a security software company. “But if I talk to colleagues in Moscow, they may get a worm trying to spread to their smartphones four or five times each week. If you hang around in the Moscow subway, you’ll get one or two worms a day.”

Who would want to put malicious software on a cellphone?

The unfortunate truth is that cellphone viruses can be highly profitable for criminals. Newer cellphones have more in common with computers than they do with the phones of yesteryear, and malicious software can take advantage of that computing power for its own ends.

The first virus, Cabir, was released for the Symbian mobile operating system and appeared in 2004. All it did was replicate itself via the Bluetooth connections more commonly used for connecting short-range radio headsets to smartphones. Recent viruses have been more insidious. In China, for example, Symbian users were recently attacked by another virus that threatened to disable their phones unless they paid $7 to the perpetrators using an instant messaging network.

Software “Trojans” — programs that claim to do something legitimate but wreak havoc in the background — have also caused problems for mobile users. Last year, Trojans began sending SMS (text) messages to premium-rate numbers in Russia from infected phones, causing users to rack up unexpected costs while the perpetrators turned a profit.

But while mobile malware is more prevalent in other parts of the world, it could be headed this way. An infected phone will message other Bluetooth-enabled phones, offering to install an application. Unfortunately, some phone owners say, “Yes.” Thus, the virus continues to spread. Because Bluetooth connections extend only a few metres, such viruses infect only cellphones close to them. If someone releases a cellphone virus on the Moscow subway, it is likely to stay largely in that area for a while.

This is one of the reasons why cellphone viruses have taken a while to spread.

“It’s early days,” says Mark Harris, director of Abingdon, Britain-based antivirus software company Sophos PLC.

That said, Cabir has now been seen in 35 countries, and some cellphone viruses are also spreading via the multimedia messaging service (MMS), which enables phone users to send messages with attachments to other phones.

Another barrier to cellphone viruses spreading in North America is that the uptake of smartphones here has been relatively limited compared with regions such as Asia, where infections are more common.

“Cellphones are all very different,” Harris says. “You couldn’t write one piece of malware that would work on all of these different phones. Until we have that ubiquity, it’ll be a smaller problem.”

Smartphone operating systems in North America include Research in Motion Ltd.’s BlackBerry software, Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Mobile, the Symbian operating system used by Nokia Corp., Palm Inc.’s own operating system and, of course, the Mac OSX-based system used by Apple Inc.’s iPhone.

Nevertheless, the use of Sun Microsystems Inc.’s Java technology on most cellphone platforms makes it possible to produce viruses that operate on almost any hardware that may be in your pocket, says Khoi Nguyen, group product manager for the mobile security group at Cupertino, Calif.-based Symantec Corp.: “It may contribute to it being more open and making it easier for hackers to write.”

Symbian has been the operating system most affected by cellphone viruses, says Nguyen, because it has the largest market share: “Windows Mobile comes a close second. It has a growing market share and it’s used a lot in business, and hackers recognize that.”

And with the iPhone 3G, now available in Canada, supporting Microsoft Exchange, Schouwenberg adds, every hip manager in every office will want to have one. That could make the iPhone an increasingly attractive target for malware writers.

When are we likely to see cellphone viruses seriously take off in the West?

“If Windows Mobile takes off, there will be viruses that will infect your phone from your PC during synchronization,” says Sophos’s Harris. “An even bigger annoyance will be SMS text spam, in which victims are lured into phoning a premium rate number, because SMS is ubiquitous — it’s on all of the platforms.”

@page_break@That is why anti-virus vendors have begun targeting mobile platforms with tools that incorporate anti-spam features for blocking nuisance SMS messages, and firewalls to protect against intrusive Bluetooth attacks. Sophos sells a mobile version of its Endpoint Security and Control product, while Symantec sells two versions of its Mobile Security product. The latter’s enterprise edition includes anti-theft technology that can protect any sensitive data stored on a phone in the event that the device is stolen.

Ironically, the most annoying characteristic of the Canadian mobile phone landscape could be what saves Canadian users from malware. Since the iPhone was introduced, U.S. mobile customers have enjoyed the luxury of “all you can eat” data plans. But, in Canada, mobile carriers are more miserly, and charge draconian fees for unencumbered data usage. If this hinders the adoption of smartphones in Canada, then any future epidemic of cellphone viruses may find fewer users to infect in the frozen north. IE