A lot of recent press has been dedicated to discussing the vulnerabilities of Symbian phones to malware. Surprisingly, the discussion is deeply divided into two factions: ones that believe that Symbian can be crippled by malicious software, and those that believe that the operating system is absolutely impregnable.
Understandably, there are a lot of concept viruses; concept viruses being those bits of malware that are written especially for anti-virus companies. Concept viruses create a sort of challenge for the companies to solve, in addition to forming test cases for the software they create. So essentially, protection from these kinds of viruses is provided
by most anti-virus utilities.
Viruses can gain entry into a phone in one of two ways: either the user downloads an application and then installs it, or accepts a program through Bluetooth and decides to install it that way. The fact of the matter remains that viruses on Symbian phones must be installed first, before they can create havoc of any kind. The Symbian operating system does not allow any sort of data transfer from an external source, without a user’s prior permission.
An additional twist in the tale has been provided by Symbian themselves, in the shape of the Symbian OS 9 version. Previously, the older versions of Symbian protested mildly against the installation of unsigned software, but now that is a thing of the past. The latest Symbian version positively disbars any unsigned application from being installed altogether. This new policy presents a formidable barrier to enterprising malware.
It is of course possible to get past this requirement by signing applications manually, thereby allowing them to slip past the protective instincts of the operating system, but that course of action should be undertaken wisely. Without a doubt, there are handy utilities that are not signed and also do not contain malicious code, but distinguishing one from the other requires knowledge and a certain degree of intrepidity.
Having said this, anti-viruses are still important, at the very least as a safeguard for chance infection and the possibility of future malware raising its ugly head. It is all very well for Symbian stalwarts to declaim angrily about the practices of anti-virus companies and that threat from viruses are negligible, but the threat is nevertheless present.
The wisest and most sensible course of action to take is to avoid downloading unsigned applications from suspicious sources. For example, a great number of people prefer to circumvent legal and moral issues by downloading free copies of applications. These cracked software applications are ideal carriers for malicious software, as they are usually signed. Additionally, installation can be phased in these applications, where a number of authorization requests will appear to a user. Even if a request for the installation of a virus appears, a user would have to be very knowledgeable about the software to be able to detect it, which is rarely the case.
Also accepting unsolicited applications is a hazardous course of action, although it is impossible for someone to hack into a phone simply by connecting to it via Bluetooth.
While being cautious is always desirable, there is not much to be gained by worrying about spectres that do not even exist.
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