We might finally have some decent mobile viruses to worry about.

Why is it that McAfee’s VirusScan Mobile is only Windows Mobile 5 and 6? Simply put, it’s because that platform gives the end-user enough rope to hang themselves. Users can grab a .CAB file of the brick breaker game from only god knows where and install it themselves through Activesync.

Surely tech-savy users don’t just install any hackware from untrusted sources right? If you believe that then you haven’t spent much time on http://www.howardforums.com/ or http://www.mobile-files.com/forum/ where every day, technophiles repackage and swap DLLs and other tasty bits from one carrier’s phone to another. Users don’t care about running untrusted code. To them, it’s just an annoying split second while they click away the nag window so they can dive into Justin Timberlake-screensaver-ring-tone wallpaper bliss.

It goes beyond running untrusted code from untrusted sources. Users will replace entire operating systems through unofficial channels:
Windows Mobile 6 for the XV6700: www.downloadsquad.com

If you step outside of your tech circle for a moment you’ll notice that most of your friends and family (you know, the people that will be watching football over Thanksgiving while you’re fixing their computers) don’t have windows mobile, RIM, or palm phones. If they have a typical Verizon phone then they follow a path like this to get applications:
Developers create and sign BREW code, that code is then tested and certified via Qualcomm’s NSTL site: https://www.nstl.com/brew/ . Ultimately the wireless carrier decides on what application they put in their catalog. (Usually after they test it themselves.)

Some see this path as a way to lock the user into the carrier’s applications. Another way to look at is the carrier is certifying that code for your phone. Given that the wrong code can put your handset into a chronic state of reboot permanently ruining the device I can see why carriers like to keep tabs on what users load on the phone.

The masses are crying about an open iPhone API. I’m sure they’ll get the open API, along with everything else that comes with it.
If you look at any of the press surrounding Android, the mantra is clearly openness and convenience. Openness and convenience; security’s best friend? <borat> NOT! </borat>

-higB