Wireless Security: News

BlackBerry and smartphone security in general hasn't garnered much attention or concern over the past few years--at least from a consumer, or user, perspective; enterprises have been invested in mobile device security since the advent of the PDA.

The first worm written for Apple's iPhone has been unleashed and is infecting phones in Australia.

Smartphones share many of the same risks of laptops and are easier to lose. Ajit Arya, deputy CIO for Arlington County, Va., supports both BlackBerrys and iPhones and is working to tighten its policies for managing them. "We have taken some basic steps," he says. For example, one recommended best practice is to require passwords. So far, the county has told employees they can set passwords but has not tried to enforce it as a requirement, Arya says.

Visitors to the Association of Tennis Professionals Web site have potentially been infected with spyware after apparent lax security allowed a malicious script to be injected across its pages.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) are asking a federal court to order the US Department of Justice to turn over records about the agency's tracking of mobile phone users.

Global energy giant BP is exploring numerous techniques to prevent sensitive information making its way out of the organization - including how best to deal with employees' use of third-party services.

The security researcher who walked away with US$10,000 last week by hacking a MacBook Air in less than two minutes said he chose to attack Apple's operating system for one simple reason.

Spying programs for mobile phones are likely to grow in sophistication and stealth as the business around selling the tools grows, according to a mobile analyst at the Black Hat conference on Friday.

RSA, the security division of EMC, has completed its annual wireless survey, and the news is mixed. Wireless adoption is moving briskly in the post-WEP era, with advanced encryption gaining ground, yet there have been some minor setbacks. There are also some potential warning flags for still-emerging wireless technologies, such as RFID.

Groundbreaking research undertaken by the Queensland University of Technology has led to the creation of systems that can detect invisible intruders on wireless local area networks.