Microsoft is adding a kill switch to Windows Phone

[Sysman]

So Cryptolocker will shortly be arriving on smartphones

Android is already "The Windows of the mobile world" in terms of being targeted by malware. One nasty trick out there is knobbliing installers for reputable apps to include nasties.

The antivirus offerings for it are pretty weak too.

[wonderboy]

indeed it does, however the sensible thing to do is to make the networks support it with commands normal people can't use. I expect Microsoft will think of such things, they hire some bright kids.

I'm assuming it would be linked to IMEI, subscriber and serial / phone number so any hacker would need all for each phone.

It's written in a C-based language (with the concomitant buffer overflow vulnerabilities). That means there will be an exploit that bypasses such checks.

[scooterscot]

They've had that for years. Press this:



And in a few minutes this:

[vetran]

It's written in a C-based language (with the concomitant buffer overflow vulnerabilities). That means there will be an exploit that bypasses such checks.

if the phone is programmed with an individual private key only the factory & network know and the routine that does it isn't exposed uses this hard coded key then the risks are less.