SECURITY IN A MOBILE WORLD! ---- PART IV

THE DIFFERENT SECURITY APPLICATIONS FOR POCKETPC

AntiVirus on the PocketPC

Strictly by virtue of the fact that handhelds do not represent much of a worth-while target to the Hacker population, PocketPCs owners everywhere can breath easier knowing they live in a fairly secure world (with regards to their PocketPCs anyways).

Relative safety on the PocketPC platform: In the Historical context, there have only been about 9 viruses created for the handheld platforms, and of those, only about two were designed for the PocketPC platform (Dust/Duts and Brador). So, in reality, you can go a long time before you ever come close to running the risk of exposure to a PocketPC based virus, presuming you are an average user who does not play with illegitimate programs obtained from IRC or hacker websites.
- Of course, if you are the type to play with hacked versions of programs, your risk of exposure goes up exponentially. This is due to the fact that the hacked versions of a popular game or application are usually offered to the user community by virus and worm writers as their method of distributing their Virus/Spyware on to your device.

The First Virus: The very first virus on the PocketPC platform was named “Dust” (or “Duts” to some), and was so incredibly advanced for a virus, that experts in the industry like Cyrus Peikari, CEO of AirScanner, placed it on par technologically with the Chernobyl virus written for the PC platform. Chernobyl was the first PC virus to break the protected “Ring 0” of the Windows operating system.
Duts/Dust was initially written as a POC (Proof-of-Concept) program, and was a “first” in many more ways: because it was a true POC Virus, it was initially sent to an AntiVirus maker instead of being released into the wild. Also, it’s one of the first “polite” viruses, in that it asks the owner of the device for permission before spreading to a new host. You can read more about it here.

The Viruses and Trojans that followed: After Dust, came many different Viruses and Trojans, some of them new in concept, with more recent version being blended from the code of previous viruses/Trojans. Here are the most infamous:
- The Brador Trojan was the first “backdoor” Trojan on the PocketPC platform. It’s aim was to open a backdoor to give remote control access of your PPC to the writer of the code.
- The Carib Virus/Worm was the first to use Bluetooth as it’s method of migration and subsequent infection of other systems. As soon as your system is infected with this Virus/Worm, it will attempt to find other Bluetooth devices which it can transmit itself to and subsequently infect. This Virus affected the Symbian OS.
- The Vapor Virus was a simple virus in that it caused the files on the device to disappear. The files were not deleted, but were instead all file attributes were set to “hidden”. This Virus affected the Symbian OS.
QUICK LIST of AntiVirus Applications for the PocketPC:
- AirScanner from AirScanner Mobile Security.
- McAfee VirusScan for Mobile (Currently in BETA).
- Symantec Anti-Virus for Handhelds
- F-Secure Anti-Virus for PocketPC
- PC-cillin for PocketPC.
- Avast! for PocketPC
- Kaspersky Lab’s Kaspersky for PDA.

Author’s note: My thanks to Cyrus Peikari, CEO of AirScanner Mobile Security, for contributing to the historical references to the AntiVirus chapter. Cyrus was kind enough to let me view his article on the evolution of the latest “mobile” threats prior to it’s formal publication.