Mobile phone viruses "massively over-hyped"

Antivirus firm F-Secure has been accused of 'over-hyping' the threat of mobile phone viruses in order to drive the sales of a new product guarding against such threats.

But the Finnish antivirus vendor has resolutely defended its claim that such viruses pose a huge threat to users, despite suggestions it has merely created its own market by talking up the risks.

Patrick Runald, an antivirus consultant from F-Secure, said: "This is definitely not hype. We believe we are going to see a huge growth in threats targeting mobile devices."

F-Secure told CNET.co.uk's sister site silicon.com it is seeing instances every week of mobile phone viruses such as CommWarrior and Cabir in the wild and, although such reports are few and far between, Runald argues that publicising the issue at such an early stage is far from hype but rather an attempt to nip the problem in the bud.

Runald said. "There are currently 70 viruses and Trojans out there targeting mobile phones and while compared to the 140,000 targeting Windows PCs it doesn't seem that bad, we're pushing the issue now to avoid ever reaching the problem we have with malware on PCs, which is out of control."

However, few other security companies have identified a need to offer protection against these forms of malware.

Sal Viveros, wireless security evangelist at McAfee, said F-Secure's figures are largely in line with industry figures in terms of the total number of mobile viruses but added such viruses have largely been "proof of concept" to date and pose little threat to users.

"It's really not a big issue right now," Viveros told silicon.com. "Two years from now it may be an issue but by then it's likely the operators are going to have taken action. I don't think a security company trying to sell this stuff on the high street is ever going to prove successful."

A spokesman for O2 agreed the issue is currently "massively over-hyped".

"We take all security concerns seriously but this is not something we're worrying about right now and it is not something our customers should be worrying about," he said.

One company which fields support calls for major mobile operators and manufacturers has also hit out at what it sees as a disproportionate amount of hype given the scale of the issue.

Doug Overton, head of communications at WDSGlobal, which handles around 100,000 helpdesk calls each month for customers of HP, Nokia, Orange, Sony-Ericsson and T-Mobile, said only 0.004 per cent of those calls relate to viruses.

And even then they don't necessarily represent actual incidences of viruses in the wild but could instead be down to a customer becoming concerned over media reports based on what Overton brands vendor "scaremongering".

Overton told silicon.com: "Security fears can provide a horror story which the media are sure to lap up and this can create a distraction from the real problems.

"There are few malicious mobile viruses in the wild and to date they have not been viewed as a significant threat."

However, Overton added that as smart phone penetration increases "from its recent level of four per cent, security risks are likely to increase -- with operating systems becoming more complex, viruses could one day become the large-scale problem that antivirus vendors have been warning us about".