New Age Electronic Security Concerns
Posted in Just when you thought it was safe to use all those electronic devices out comes the newest report to scare the pants off of you. Just in time for the Halloween season, the SANS Institute has released its yearly report and people using all types of telecommunication devices are not happy. The two newest threats are cell phones and the VOIP systems that are springing up around the country. This comes on the heals of several new viruses that have been released in the past ten months that are aimed at these devices and services. Of course just because the institute is able to claim that these are the new security concerns for the 2007 year does not mean they know what to do about it. In truth they are just as lost as we are when it comes to the issue.
The newest thing in viruses is the cell phone worm, which attacks cell phones and uses them to harvest personal information. How are they able to do this on a cell phone? Well the answer is simple, because the world is now using their cell phone for just about everything in the world, including email and personal messaging. So they are basically mobile computers that are always connected to the internet by way of the cell phone service. Sounds like a good idea when you are the owner of the phone, but what about when you are the person who gets a virus and finds out that your identity has been stolen? That is where the problem comes in.
The main problem with cell phones is that they do not use a standard operating system and therefore cannot be covered by the standard virus protection. With that in mind there are several companies that are working on building virus protection for cell phones that would operate much the same way that a home virus protection system would. The new systems would be aimed at the exterior communications and not at the calls that come in. The main security concerns are emails and text messages since they can be sent from a computer to a cellular telephone with the newest systems in place.
VOIP is the other concern. Using a new virus the hackers are able to break into the servers and house new lines on the server and then sell the dial tone to people. The hackers get the money while the company that was hacked gets the bill for the added line. Plans are in place to take care of this issue but there is no clear cut resolution in place as yet.
