Experts predict malware field day for iPhone in '08
Like Y2K and the end of rock and roll, pundits love to call out platforms that are ripe for a nightmarish, post-apocalyptic hell-on-earth sort of attack by the world's technologically inclined miscreants. In that vein, mobile phones have been billed for years as the next great frontier in virii, largely because they're getting smarter, more open, and more ubiquitous than ever before. We can buy that logic, but the waves upon waves of malicious code infecting the world's smartphones simply haven't happened. So at what point do we say that these analysts are crying wolf?
Now might not be a bad time to start, as Arbor Networks' security group is calling the iPhone a likely target in 2008 by hackers who want to "be the first to hack a new platform." We wouldn't dare say that there won't be attacks on the iPhone's security holes next year and beyond, but we don't think users need to be scrambling to disable their data connections, either; Windows Mobile, Symbian, Palm OS, and everyone else have gotten along fine for years aside from the occasional malware blip on the radar that barely makes a splash and goes unnoticed by 99 percent of the world's users. Not to mention the fact that the opportunity to "be the first" to hack the iPhone has come and gone -- so to the hackers of the world who're thinking about diving into the wide world of iPhone hacking, may we suggest you put your brainpower to the forces of good, not evil?
