Security of handhelds far too lax

ARNnet reports on a demonstration by Caleb Sima, CTO and co-founder of Spi Dynamics, an Atlanta company that makes software for uncovering vulnerabilities in Web applications, on the growing handheld security threat.

"What Sima said he had learned dabbling with cell phone security was that nobody - not software developers, carriers, corporate network executives and certainly not end users - appeared to have looked seriously at this issue. This, despite the fact that millions of cell phones are now in the hands of corporate employees.

Sima recently began playing with Short Message Service as a way to launch a denial-of-service attack against cell phone users, using his own phone and those of co-workers.

"I can send 1000 SMS messages to your cell phone in the blink of an eye," he said. "And I can do it anonymously." Sima created an SMS flood, as he terms it, that rendered his cell phone unable to make or take calls."

Alarming, but one must bear in mind this is coming from a security company - scaring us and then selling us reassurance - is what they do for a living.

emily | 11:48 AM | Spam, Viruses and Hoaxes |
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