Security steps for smartphone users

Smart phones are an important asset for people living in the 21st century.With functionality similar to computers, smart phones have become all-in-one portable devices providing interconnectivity and device-to-device communication. Such continuous improvement in capabilities will cause the popularity of smart phones to constantly rise. Besides the popularity of smart phones there has also been a sharp increase in mobile malware. Most of the mobile malware recently discovered target Google's Android operating system. The ease of modifying and the simplicity of the design of the operating system are the aspects that are drawing malware developers towards Android smart phones. This study focus on the current state of mobile malware, the adequacy of mobile security applications and possible security steps smart phone users can take to prevent mobile malware attacks. To evaluate the adequacy of current mobile security applications a malicious Android application is developed and deployed on an Android smartphone. In addition, this new Android application is also evaluated against mobile security applications. From the results additional security steps are identified that users of smartphones can follow to prevent or detect possible mobile malware infections. The ultimate goal of this research is to eventually automate the identified steps in the form of an application rather than depending on the user to execute the steps.

I. Introduction

Smartphones are an integral part of everyday living in the 21st century. With advance capabilities, high definition displays and millions of applications simply a click of a button away give smartphones the opportunity to become a prominent companion. Along with the popularity comes the increasing trend to attack smartphones by infecting applications with malicious content. During 2012 the motivation to attack smartphones continued to grow alongside the reliance users place on these devices to perform telephonic services, financial transactions and entertainment. These are just a few motivations behind the development of mobile malware with the preferred incentives being: novelty and amusement, selling user information, stealing credentials, performing premium rate calls or SMS spam [1].