These days, I spend a lot of my time looking at mobile devices and wireless technologies from a security perspective. I am particularly interested in the convergence of technology, and something that recently made me sit up and say “Here we go again!” is Wireless USB.
A development group has written a specification document for Wireless USB. The collaborative group (made up of representatives from Agere, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Microsoft, NEC, Philips, and Samsung) is confident in the development of Wireless USB because they believe that it is a logical evolution of the ubiquitous technology of wired USB. The specification document states that Wireless USB can utilize the existing USB infrastructure and the USB model of smart host and simple device, but I am more interested in the security of the...
So, it's started. In terms of security, we are seeing first generation mobile operating systems transition into second generation mobile operating systems. While the threats mobile embedded devices face today are relatively small, they are very real threats. We often see samples of backdoors, spyware, worms, Trojans, and arbitrary code execution for either one or both of two key commercial mobile operating systems (Symbian and Windows Mobile).
What strikes me, however, is that the vendors seem to be learning from the tribulations in the desktop space. What I mean to say is, they could sit around and wait for these issues to become as rampant as they are today in the desktop arena before they addressed security in the mobile environment; however, initial evidence suggests that mobile OS companies like Symbian, Microsoft, and ARM are becoming more proactive with security.
With the release of Symbian 9 we are seeing a more granular permissions model....
