Will 2011 be the year of mobile malware?

Perhaps one of the most common predictions of the last six years has been that mobile malicious software will suddenly proliferate, driven by widespread adoption of smartphones with advanced OSes.

None of those prognostications have really come to fruition, but it's likely that the coming year will bring a host of new malicious applications. Users -- while generally aware of threats aimed at their desktop computers and laptops -- have a good chance of being caught flat-footed with their mobile phones.

In the third quarter of this year, up to 80 million smartphones were sold around the world, which accounted for about 20 percent of the total number of mobile phones sold, according to statistics published last month by analyst firm Gartner. Smartphones are Internet- capable and therefore more vulnerable to attack than other mobile devices.