Malware Poses Threat to Mobile Phones

Security experts have so far identified about 500 viruses or other types of malware or security vulnerabilities that target mobile phones, a newspaper report said on Sunday.

Phones are indeed vulnerable to the same types of security threats from malware that face PCs, the San Jose Mercury News reported.

"The more that phones can perform the same functions as PCs, the greater the chance they will have similar vulnerabilities," the paper said.

Perhaps the best known handset virus is Commwarrior-A, a piece of malware identified in 2005 that spread to phones using the then-current version of the Symbian operating system via text messages, according to the report. The number of pieces of mobile malware detected since then has grown steadily, said the paper.

Experts say there are all kinds of ways that mobile malware could make mischief. Hackers have already induced phones to exchange text messages with rogue operators that charge a high per-message fee.