I-Phone applications bring the world to your fingertips, but what about viruses; you know the kind you get on your computer?
Well it appears there's an app for that.
Many of us rely so much on smart phones and it seems hackers are taking notice, some using those popular Apps as a disguise to gain access to your personal information.
Ben Scheirman of Chai One, a digital agency that specializes in custom mobile App development, created the Pocket Tabs App. He submitted it to Apple back in August and by November you could purchase it from the App store. "They do have a lot tools that allow Apple to investigate how we are using the software development kits," said Scheirman. "But again, they don't have your source code and don't review every line of code to make sure you aren't doing something you shouldn't be," he said.
And that's what has many security experts, like Michael Gregg, concerned. "So you pull down a game, maybe it's a free game, you pull it down and you run it, but what it actually does is maybe take and pull all your email addresses out then they use it as spamming," Gregg said.
Or worse, hackers could access important login and password word information like to your bank accounts. Just think of how many times you've used the same login/password combo for different websites. "You do have access to address book data, phone numbers, email addresses of your entire address book - for some people that's many of hundreds of contacts," Scheirman said.
Last fall experts say game App "Storm8" was sued for doing just that, and experts say "Aurora Feint," another game, was uploading all it's users contacts.
And it's not just I-Phones that are vulnerable; Scheirman said the Android has also been the target of fake apps. "They were basically scamming everybody and collecting data," he said.
"It's actually very, very hard to tell," Gregg said. Unfortunately the only real way to prevent these types of hackers, he said is for someone to actually develop an anti-viral app for smart phones "I hope we develop these defenses up front before we wait until there's a major breach or a major series of incidents that happen," he said.
Otherwise, Scheirman said, it's like leaving the front door open - somebody just has to find your house.
Scheirman said the jail-broken I-Phones are even more vulnerable since it allows third party apps to run on it.
Some promising news in all this - these issues were raised at Wednesday's big security forum in Washington D.C. Experts are hoping this will prompt Apple to be more stringent when it comes to accepting Apps and even develop a safeguard against these types of viruses.
Well it appears there's an app for that.
Many of us rely so much on smart phones and it seems hackers are taking notice, some using those popular Apps as a disguise to gain access to your personal information.
Ben Scheirman of Chai One, a digital agency that specializes in custom mobile App development, created the Pocket Tabs App. He submitted it to Apple back in August and by November you could purchase it from the App store. "They do have a lot tools that allow Apple to investigate how we are using the software development kits," said Scheirman. "But again, they don't have your source code and don't review every line of code to make sure you aren't doing something you shouldn't be," he said.
And that's what has many security experts, like Michael Gregg, concerned. "So you pull down a game, maybe it's a free game, you pull it down and you run it, but what it actually does is maybe take and pull all your email addresses out then they use it as spamming," Gregg said.
Or worse, hackers could access important login and password word information like to your bank accounts. Just think of how many times you've used the same login/password combo for different websites. "You do have access to address book data, phone numbers, email addresses of your entire address book - for some people that's many of hundreds of contacts," Scheirman said.
Last fall experts say game App "Storm8" was sued for doing just that, and experts say "Aurora Feint," another game, was uploading all it's users contacts.
And it's not just I-Phones that are vulnerable; Scheirman said the Android has also been the target of fake apps. "They were basically scamming everybody and collecting data," he said.
"It's actually very, very hard to tell," Gregg said. Unfortunately the only real way to prevent these types of hackers, he said is for someone to actually develop an anti-viral app for smart phones "I hope we develop these defenses up front before we wait until there's a major breach or a major series of incidents that happen," he said.
Otherwise, Scheirman said, it's like leaving the front door open - somebody just has to find your house.
Scheirman said the jail-broken I-Phones are even more vulnerable since it allows third party apps to run on it.
Some promising news in all this - these issues were raised at Wednesday's big security forum in Washington D.C. Experts are hoping this will prompt Apple to be more stringent when it comes to accepting Apps and even develop a safeguard against these types of viruses.
