Mobile OS Security and Threats: A Critical Review

Abstract

The adoption of Smartphone’s in daily lives is transforming from simple communication to smart and the use of these multipurpose devices is rapidly increasing. The main reason for the increase in the Smartphone usage is their small size, their enhanced functionality and their ability to host many useful and attractive applications. However, this vast use of mobile platform makes these smart devices a soft target for security attacks and breach of privacy. The cases about the attacks on personal mobiles phones are on the rise which is a motivation for developing Smartphone application with better effective and efficient security measures to mitigate the impact of possible threats. This paper examines the feasibility of malware development in Smartphone platforms by average programmers that have access to the official tools and programming libraries provided by Smartphone platforms. In this paper comparison of Smartphones like Android, Blackberry, Apple iOS, Symbian, Window Mobile is given based on the specific evaluation criterions used for assessing the security level.