By Mohsen Allam

By  Osama Diab

Trojan horses, worms and spyware?

Turns out, there’s an app for those.

Once only a pox on computers, experts say a rapidly-growing number of viruses are moving into what had been virgin territory: your smartphone.

The list includes programs that can do everything from the benign, like replacing your wallpaper with a photo of an 80s pop star, to the devastating, like stealing your bank account PIN number.

“Today [] mobile phones are an integral part of our life,” says Denis Maslennikov, a senior analyst at Kaspersky, which makes one of the world’s leading anti-virus programs.

But for hackers, the multi-purpose devices have become a gold mine of personal and corporate data, he says.

Last year, 257 new mobile viruses were identified, almost double the 2008 total, according to Kaspersky.

Thanks largely to a rise in the popularity of smartphones, malevolent software, or malware, is spreading so quickly that some industry players have dubbed 2010 the “Year of the Mobile Virus.”

Today’s smartphones, like the BlackBerry, iPhone and the legions of lesser-known models, are essentially ultra-compact computers, making them vulnerable to the same types of viruses that attack their larger counterparts.

In 2009, unlocked, or “jailbroken” Australian iPhones were struck by a bug called Ikee that changed the phone’s wallpaper to a picture of former English pop star Rick Astley. While not exactly devastating, the attack certainly proved a point.

The virus’s 21-year-old creator, Ashley Towns, wrote on his Twitter page that the stunt was intended to raise awareness about mobile phone security threats. He also provided an explanation for the prank in the source code of the virus: “People are stupid, and this is to prove it so. It’s not that hard guys. But hey who cares, it’s only your bank details at stake.”

In the same year, another fast-breeding virus hit smartphones running on the Symbian operating system, one of the most widely-used mobile platforms in the world. The virus, which spread through text messages, worried industry experts because it easily bypassed the anti-virus software built into many smartphones.

And in March, Vodafone found itself under heavy criticism in Spain for shipping the popular HTC Magic phone, which had been preloaded with the Mariposa botnet malware, a virus that steals information when synching with PCs.

Faced with such threats, a growing number of companies for which smartphones have become an essential business tool are buttressing their cyber fortifications.

A 2009 study by a UK consultancy, Goode Intelligence, found that 54% of companies in Europe and North America planned to deploy anti-virus software on corporate smartphones.

However, according to the same report, 65% of organizations allow employee-owned mobiles for business use. That puts a large part of the burden of safe smartphone use on personal users, who are increasingly a target of malware.

In Egypt, about 40% of the people who own BlackBerries, for example, are personal users, many of whom check Facebook, pay their credit card bill and email friends with their phones.

That means mobiles are laden with a cache of data that hackers — many of whom earn their livelihood by trading information — are salivating over. To get their hands on it, they’ve created legions of viruses that can burrow into a smartphone and steal passwords, contact lists and documents.

Other viruses are more directly larcenous: They can make a phone dial long-distance numbers, leaving you holding a big bill at the end of the month, says Maslennikov.

Despite the threats, many users remain largely ignorant that their pocket handheld suffers the same vulnerabilities as a desktop computer.

The Ikee worm could have been avoided if users simply password–protected their smartphones, which was the creator’s point in deploying it.

Once virus-makers begin to monetize their malware activities, experts fear the attacks will become more frequent, more widespread and far less benevolent.

For personal users and companies alike, awareness is half the battle. Basic security steps, as you would take on any conventional computer, are the best medicine.

Users should ignore SMS and MMS spam messages and never follow the links inside them. Software installed on a smartphone should be installed from a reliable website, ideally directly from the developer’s webpage.

Bluetooth capabilities can also be a major backdoor through your smartphone’s defenses. Never receive files from unknown devices via Bluetooth and minimize the amount of personal information stored on your device.

Should you be the victim of mobile malware, antivirus labs such as Kaspersky and F-Secure provide anti-malware programs for mobile platforms.  bt

With files from Michael Kaput.