State of Telecom Industry in Pakistan

As smartphones become more like portable computers, scammers, phishers and other cybcer criminals have stepped up their attacks on smartphones. Here are a few excerpts from an article which provides tips on securing your smartphone.

Security experts have long warned of the vulnerability of smart phones to hackers. And in the past year the threat has been highlighted by an attack on the Symbian operating system, used mainly by Nokia Corp. phones, and a demonstration at a conference of a flaw that was found in the iPhone’s security.

As the software for smart phones becomes more sophisticated and open, they become better breeding grounds for a new generation of spyware and viruses. Hackers can work their way into your phone through text messages, steal your information and use your contact list to find more victims. Scammers can now dupe you into revealing your Social Security number or credit-card account number on your phone, just like they’ve been doing for years on PCs.

To some extent, you need to rely on your phone’s maker to keep you safe. But there are several simple ways you can help protect yourself.

Message Minefields

Text messaging is a favorite service for many mobile-phone users. It’s also becoming a favorite line of attack for scammers. For instance, text messages carrying insidious coding were the weapon in an attack late last year on phones using the Symbian operating system and were later identified as a threat to the iPhone.

For owners of the Symbian phones that were targeted, the attack was a major annoyance. Phones that received the malicious text messages shut down and lost their ability to receive any further text messages—damage that could only be repaired by sending them back to the factory. Then, in July, hackers at a conference on digital security demonstrated the ability to send text messages to iPhones that would allow the senders to gain access to data stored in the devices.

Apple Inc. and the Symbian Foundation patched up the holes in their security. For attacks like these, users have no defenses of their own—the messages do their damage without any action on the part of the user. But these incidents should alert smart-phone users to the vulnerability of their devices, and encourage them to guard against other kinds of attacks.

That includes phishing scams, which attempt to acquire personal data such as passwords or credit-card account information through fraudulent messages. These scams have spread from email to text messaging. Here the best protection should be familiar: Be skeptical of any messages that ask for passwords, account numbers or any other personal information. When in doubt, check directly with the company that claims to be asking for the information.

Multimedia messages—photo attachments sent like text messages—also pose a threat. A message could contain a virus that not only can tap into any information stored on your phone but also dig into your phone’s address book to spread itself to all of your contacts. Other versions might spread by using the phone’s Bluetooth connection to attack nearby devices. Attacks like these will drain your phone’s battery and leave you with a large messaging bill, not to mention the embarrassment of contaminating the phones of your friends and colleagues, or even perfect strangers.

Again, caution is the best protection. If you don’t know the origin of the message or don’t recognize the number it’s sent from, it’s best to delete it before opening. Even if you do recognize the number, be wary of messages you weren’t expecting, since viruses spread through contact lists look like they’re coming from a trusted source.

Denying Applications

Applications could be another avenue for hackers, security experts warn, though it appears to be one that hasn’t been explored yet to any great extent.

One way to head off potential problems is to limit the access applications have to your phone’s functions. For example, some games require access to your Internet connection so that they can compare your scores to those of other players. But many applications don’t need this capability, and if you find that one of those apps does have access to your connection, it could be a sign that something is amiss.

Smart phones running on the Android operating system or the BlackBerry system allow you to limit the amount of access an application has. You simply head to your Settings menu and choose Application. You can then look at each application to see which phone functions it has access to, and deny it access to any that don’t seem necessary.