What is the main difference between a PC virus and a mobile virus?
Skip contentAs we know the main operating systems for smartphones are Symbian and Microsoft. Are there different viruses for each operating system?
Aaron Davidson: There are a number of differences between the world of PC viruses and mobile viruses:
- the PC virus world is much more mature in almost every respect, the anti-virus products have been around many years and the virus writing techniques for the pc platform are extraordinarily sophisticated;
- the number of viruses released on the PC platform vastly outnumbers the number presently being released for mobile platforms;
- the world has largely settled on a single main operating system for desktop computers unlike the mobile world where the battle for the hearts and minds is still being waged by Symbian, Microsoft, Palm and others;
- PC’s have vastly greater resources than mobile phones and this impacts enormously on both the viruses that can be written for the mobile platforms and the anti-virus solutions that can be deployed to protect them;
- mobile devices have a much greater degree of connectivity than PC’s. PC’s typically only have a Lan or dial-up connection. Mobile devices on the other hand typically have SMS, MMS, GPRS, IR, BT and serial/USB via cable/cradle. The large difference in the number of ways that mobile devices can communicate compared to PC’s has a lot of implications for the development of both viruses and anti-viruses. As I often say to people "Phones want to communicate, viruses want to be communicated, you figure it out!".
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Mihai Alexandru Macovschi
Editor In Chief
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