Controlling Mobile Malware & Viruses

The emergence of ComWarrior A in March 2005 brought the first MMS-virus to operator networks. Most operators have seen a level of infected MMS being transmitted through their networks, resulting in increased capacity usage, customer care issues, and increased costs to provide temporary fixes. While the number of viruses is relatively small and the range of Operating Systems is limiting penetration; most operators are seeing up to 12% of MMS traffic being virus generated, and that small groups of users are being hurt by high MMS and SMS traffic that is unknown to them.

In the mobile space, the closer integration between operating system and customer's wallet may mean that virus generation could once again be driven by commercial opportunity rather than demonstrating technical prowess. The current vulnerabilities on leading mobile phones would allow a virus that subscribes a user to a premium rate SMS content service, generates reverse-billed SMS or calls a premium rate phone line.

Rogue applications are emerging, which are poorly written and can cause flooding of an operator's SMS infrastructure and impact core network capacity.

The introduction of a filtering solution such as the AdaptiveMobile Policy Control Framework provides an operator with the tools to prevent both replication of viruses; and to prevent the operation of an infected handset in order to protect a subscriber’s data, reputation and credit. To complete the cycle, infected handsets can be targeted with disinfect tools to remove the source of the network issues.

As corporate customers are increasingly adopting smartphones and are most at risk, mobile operators are being asked for network-based malware protection as a new security service

To find out more about this solution, the supporting business case, and implementation case studies please contact us at sales@adaptivemobile.com


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