Smart phones are getting smarter and in the process, more popular. More and more business users have iPhones, Blackberries, Androids, or Windows Mobile phones – either privately owned or issued by the company – that they use to access information on the corporate network. This is convenient for the users and benefits companies since employees can be more productive, but it also creates security issues. Smart phone exploits have been thought of more as just “proof of concept” than real, and that was the case for a long time.
But just as bank robbers rob banks because “that’s where the money is,” hackers and attackers tend to target the operating systems, protocols and applications that will give them the biggest “bang for the buck,” that is, the largest number of victims. And as this article postulates, the smart phone market is reaching critical mass, where there are enough of them out there to make it worth the while of the bad guys to focus on exploits that target these devices. A special problem is the number of iPhones that have been “jailbroken” to allow the users more control over what they can install on their phones, but which, in the process, have lost much of their security.
This article is an eye-opener for IT personnel who have to deal with smart phones on their networks: