Mobile viruses are more widespread in the Asia Pacific than anywhere else in the world. But there's no cause for panic, as most mobile viruses are harmless, said Patrik Runald, senior security specialist at F-Secure Corp.
'The virus just spreads from one device to another. However, they don't delete any messages, and they don't make your phone invalid. They are more of an annoyance.'
Explaining why Asia has the highest numbers, Runald said most first in-the-wild reports originated from the region, and Asia has a high percentage of smartphones.
Less than half a year since the mobile malware count exceeded 100, the figure is now set to reach 200 individual viruses. Although most are variants of already detected viruses, mobile malware continues to show a growth trend.
Even if an end-user has no mobile antivirus software installed, all Symbian-targeted viruses require the user to accept them with a number of operational steps before infection can take place.
According to Runald, there are two types of mobile viruses: Cabir, which spreads via Bluetooth and drains your phone battery power, and Commwarrior, which spreads via Bluetooth and by MMS messages. Commwarrior does not destroy the phone but runs up usage and raises your phone bill.
Although viruses are not yet a serious threat to phones, Trojans certainly can be. 'There are around 200 trojans that will destroy your mobile phone and make it invalid. You might get hit if you download pirated software. If you bring your infected phone to your service provider, they usually reformat your phone and you will lose messages and contacts.'
F-Secure will be showcasing two products at CommunicAsia2006 that were first launched at Cebit earlier this year. The first, F-Secure Bluetooth Honeypot, scans for devices that are Bluetooth enabled and where Bluetooth is configured to be in discoverable mode.
The second product. F-Secure Worldmap, was developed to get a graphical view of viruses spreading around the world. The system displays the infection reports on a graphical world map - in real-time.
Worldmap can be used to spot typical trends with email threats.