[ISN] Researchers: Rootkits Work Nicely On Smartphones, Thank You

From: InfoSec News <alerts_at_private>
Date: Wed, 24 Feb 2010 00:20:13 -0600 (CST)
http://www.darkreading.com/vulnerability_management/security/client/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=223100433

By Tim Wilson
DarkReading
Feb 23, 2010

Computer scientists at Rutgers University this week are demonstrating 
ways that rootkits can attack new generations of smart mobile phones.

The researchers, who are presenting their findings at a mobile computing 
workshop in Maryland, are showing how a rootkit could cause a smartphone 
to eavesdrop on a meeting, track its owner's travels, or rapidly drain 
its battery to render the phone useless -- all without the user's 
knowledge.

"Smartphones are essentially becoming regular computers," says Vinod 
Ganapathy, assistant professor of computer science in Rutgers' School of 
Arts and Sciences. "They run the same class of operating systems as 
desktop and laptop computers, so they are just as vulnerable to attack 
by [malware]."

Ganapathy and computer science professor Liviu Iftode worked with three 
students to study the use of rootkits in smartphone operating systems. 
They note that while many PCs carry virtual machine monitors to help 
detect rootkits, most smartphones cannot support a VM monitor. 

[...]


___________________________________________________________
Register now for HITBSecConf2010 - Dubai, the premier 
deep-knowledge network security event in the GCC, 
featuring keynote speakers John Viega and Matt Watchinski! 
http://conference.hitb.org/hitbsecconf2010dxb/
Received on Tue Feb 23 2010 - 22:20:13 PST

This archive was generated by hypermail 2.2.0 : Tue Feb 23 2010 - 22:29:21 PST