With the number of identified mobile viruses now exceeding 100, the rising threat of infection has also alerted enterprises to scrutinise key security issues in their mobile phone fleets. As essential working tools, smartphones, communicators and palmtops that become infected with malware can disrupt business as well as generate significant costs to a company.
While the threat posed by mobile malware is in real terms, still small compared to the PC platform, the convergence of technologies that link the two has created a new business opportunity for the criminal class to exploit. New variants of existing mobile malware pop up with surprising regularity and the payloads they can now deliver increase the magnitude of the threat they pose.
One particular mobile virus, Commwarrior, which made its appearance in spring time this year has been particularly noteworthy - first in its ability to exploit both local Bluetooth infection and the use of MMS transmission in an intelligent way (MMS is activated at night when the phone is otherwise immobile or 'on standby') and second in its ability to mutate.
At present, there are three identifiable variants of Commwarrior, respectively .A, .B and most lately, .C. In many cases, Commwarrior infection has resulted in large phone bills due to the amount of MMS messages it sends to recipients in the host's address book. Pausing on this thought for a moment, consider the possible damage to one user on the hypothesis that he has an unprotected smartphone, which has become infected. If the cost of a single MMS is for argument's sake, 0,50 Euros and there are 100 contacts in the phone's inbox, the total cost of infection is potentially 50 Euros.
While the cost may not be high per one employee, amplifying this for an entire company's fleet of smartphones leaves the company with a significantly larger phone bill than anticipated. And, as is the case in the PC world with email worms, customers, contractors, partners and friends may be less than delighted to receive an infection from a trusted source.
In the last quarter of this year, there was an increasing amount of media coverage about Commwarrior.A and Commwarrior.B. to the extent that many new operators posted warnings about its spread. This was timely since, in the same time frame, Commwarrior.C emerged from its suspected site of origin in Russia with new features making disinfection difficult to impossible without specific tools such as those developed by
F-Secure.
With these and other mobile threats in mind, in order to help our corporate customers,
F-Secure has developed F-Secure Mobile Anti-Virus for Businesses. F-Secure offers corporate customers both F-Secure Mobile Anti-Virus and
F-Secure Mobile Security products to protect their smartphones against viruses, Trojans and other malware. And for corporate IT administrators, the F-Secure Mobile Services -portal offers centralized monitoring of protection and wireless antivirus service status of a company´s smartphones.
F-Secure Mobile Anti-Virus is available for the following phone models:
- Nokia 7650, 3650, 3660, N-Gage
- Siemens SX1
- Nokia 6600, 6630, 6670, 6680, 6681, 7610, 6260, 3230, N70, N90
- Panasonic X700 and X800
- Nokia 7710
- PocketPCs Phone Edition 2003/2003SE: Qtek2020, Qtek9090, Qtek S100, MDA II, MDA III, and MDA Compact.
- Smartphone 2003/2003SE: Motorola MPX220, Qtek8200, Qtek8010, Qtek8020, SDA, Qtek8100 and SDA Music
F-Secure Mobile Security is available for Nokia 9300 and 9500 Communicator Series.
For more information about F-Secure Mobile Anti-Virus for Businesses, please go to the following link 
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