Malware on 1.6% of Symbian smart phones
Think your cell phone is immune to viruses and other malware? Think again. According to a survey from SMobile Systems, one in 63 smart phones powered by the Symbian OS are infected with some form of malware.
Symbian isn't huge in the U.S. (it primarily appears on Nokia handsets) but worldwide it is a market dominatrix. Extrapolated over all the cell phones in the wild that run Symbian, that means millions of infected handsets out there.
Sadly, most users of infected phones probably don't know it. Cell phone malware is often very silent and stealthy, and few users have any sort of security program that would detect such an infection in the first place. Meanwhile, the malware keeps running under the hood -- stealing passwords to financial institutions, sending email and SMS messages on the behalf of the user (some text message services can cause the sender of the messages to be billed), or even letting hackers listen in on cell phone calls as they are made.
