Cell Phone Viruses

Reported May 2005

PITTSBURGH (Ivanhoe Broadcast News) -- It takes constant vigilance to combat the viruses that persistently lurk in cyber space. While we all know our PCs are vulnerable to data loss, you might be surprised to find out so is your cell phone! A new technology could be the key to ferreting out electronic viruses forever.

That fancy cell phone you use to surf the Web and check e-mail could be infected with a computer virus.

"Our cell phones are becoming more and more sophisticated to look more and more like regular computers, and so they can also acquire viruses," says Adrian Perrig, Ph.D., an assistant professor of engineering at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

While most of us take steps to safeguard our PCs, cell phone viruses are so new you might not even know about them. Engineers at Carnegie Mellon University found a key to detecting even the most evasive electronic bugs.

Dr. Perrig says, "Our technique is called SoftWare-based ATTestation, which allows an external host -- like the laptop computer or even another cell phone -- allows them to look into the memory of a device in a way that even malicious code executing on the device cannot hide."

Traditional anti-virus programs scan for a list of known threats, but if a threat is not on the list, it's not detected. With software-based attestation -- SWATT for short -- there's no virus roster. Rather it scans the memory of a handheld device. Because all viruses must dwell in memory, any deviation signals a potential virus.

Right now SWATT only detects bugs. Once they figure out how to exterminate them, it will go on the market. In addition to computers, PDAs and cell phones, this software can detect viruses in any communication device, even the navigation systems of luxury cars.

Click here to Go Inside This Science or contact:

Adrian Perrig, Ph.D.
Electrical and Computer Engineer
Carnegie Mellon University

Chriss Swaney
PAO
(412) 268-5776
swaney@andrew.cmu.edu


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