I’m about to hop a plane for Kansas City, which means that I’m making doubly sure my iPhone is charged for the day. I’m not really an addictive personality, but I definitely rely heavily on this little gadget, and I’m sure that many of the people reading this entry have the same attachment to their own smartphone. After all, there are roughly 1 billion mobile workers in the world, if recent figures from IDC are accurate.
So far, the smartphone world has been remarkably free of security scandal, which is a good thing considering how much so many of us rely on these things. But some data released last week by Rutgers University suggests that we may be living on borrowed time when it comes to avoiding security threats to smart phones.
How could someone mess with your smartphone? By using malware called “rootkits,” which could corrupt the operating system on your phone. What makes rootkits particularly dangerous is that they are a different sort of malicious software than would attack your personal computer. That means the defenses that keep you safe from them will need to be different.
Here are three potential ways that your smart phone could be compromised using a rootkit, according to the Rutgers researchers:
- Someone could eavesdrop on one of your calls (sort of a like a bug on your phone, without the actual bug), by turning on the microphone without you knowing it
- Someone could use the location tracking information on your device to watch where you are
- Someone could drain your battery from afar, which would leave you literally powerless from a communications standpoint
A piece of malware could enter your phone via the Bluetooth connection that connects your wireless earpiece or via a text message.
Here’s some perspective from one of the researchers, Rutgers computer science professor Liviu Iftode:
“What we’re doing today is raising a warning flag. We’re showing that people with general computer proficiency can create rootkit malware for smart phones. The next step is to work on defenses.”
