Stories about: Symbian

Spying programs for mobile phones are likely to grow in sophistication and stealth as the business around selling the tools grows, according to a mobile analyst at the Black Hat conference on Friday.

Symantec Tuesday unveiled the 2008 editions of its Norton AntiVirus and Internet Security desktop protection products, adding what it calls "threat interceptor" defense to prevent execution of malicious code enabled through a drive-by download.

Mobile security threats are a relatively minor annoyance to a handful of users in Europe and Asia. However, conditions are rapidly ripening for these threats to start overwhelming both companies and individual users in North America.

My heart sank when I first saw Al Gore pull out his BlackBerry. It was in the waning weeks of the 2000 US presidential campaign, and there he was on the TV, tapping away on his then-novel converged device. Though I had no evidence, I was positive that whatever he was reading had already been perused by some conservative skunk works, with his responses scrutinized not long after. Given recent revelations about the opposition's ethics and panting obsession with domestic spying, I still suspect that any eavesdropping technically possible at the time was probably being done.

Wireless vendors are rolling out a new generation of handheld computers called smartphones for corporate users, but many network executives say they won't consider them until the means to manage and secure them are clear.

Mobile phones running Symbian's Series 60 operating system are the target of a new strain of the Skulls Trojan horse program. The new Trojan comes with the Cabir.B worm, which, unlike the first version of the virus, can spread to other phones within reach of Bluetooth broadcasting range.

More details are emerging about what may be the first mobile phone worm.