Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Mobile application vulnerabilities

Mobile devices outnumber traditional computers at a ratio of about 3:1 and, by 2015, it's estimated that 30% of them will be 'smart phone' devices, including tablets. That's just too tempting a target for bad guys for users not to be vigilant. This is especially true of users with commercially sensitive information to process, especially in industries such as financial services.

Already, the Skype application on the iOS (iPhone and iPad) is open to abuse: the bad guys can get at data on your phone, including its address book.

And, for regular computer users, there's a report today by the BBC that a UK firm is accused of supplying surveillance technology to the pre-revolution Egyptian authorities. The firm denies it, but the interesting piece in the report is that their technology allows monitoring of Skype calls, together with popular services such as Hotmail, Yahoo! and Gmail.
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