Smartphones and PDAS – Threats
A simplistic way to look at threats to hand-held devices is to compare them with those for desktop computers, which are commoner to everybody . Fundamentally, the threat profile for hand-held devices is a superset of the profile for desktop computers.
The supplementary threats for mobile handheld devices stem principally from two sources:
- Their size and portability
- Their available wireless interfaces and related services.
Size and portability can consequence in the loss of physical control of a device. With sufficient time and effort and with physical control, numerous types of protection mechanisms can be defeat or circumvented to get access to the contents of a device or set up the device for reuse or resale.
HP iPAQ 111 Classic Handheld
Wireless interfaces such as cellular and Bluetooth offer extra avenues of exploitation. Services that necessitate subscription (for instance, cellular voice and text messaging) and collect charges supported on utilization (for example, number of text messages, toll numbers, and unit transmission charges) can be a means of fraud or otherwise cause financial damage.
They can as well be utilized to deliver malware, the equivalent as with non-subscription wireless interfaces such as Bluetooth. Security threats to mobile handheld devices include the following items, which are discussed in more detail in the future article of Mobile Security series:
- Loss, theft, or disposal
- illegitimate access
- Malware
- Spam
- Electronic eavesdropping
- Electronic tracking
- Cloning
- Server-resident data
3 Responses to “Smartphones and PDAS – Threats”
Very interesting article.I wait to read more about this subject
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