Yet Another Symbian Vulnerability Update

The more the mobile devices are approaching to advance their security, the numbers of vulnerabilities are also becoming more astonishing. The number of mobile phones including smart phones is rising vertically, and so has the amount of malware activity. This report documents the latest threats in Symbian mobile industry and analyses the consequence. In addition, it will suggest the possible solution that may help individuals to protect their device & ultimately maintain the privacy

Information security concerns around enterprise bring your own device adoption in South African higher education institutions

The research carried out in this thesis is an investigation into the information security concerns around the use of personally-owned mobile devices within South African universities. This concept, which is more commonly known as Bring Your Own Device or BYOD has raised many data loss concerns for organizational IT Departments across various industries worldwide. Universities as institutions are designed to facilitate research and learning and as such, have a strong culture toward the sharing of information which complicates management of these data loss concerns even further. As such, the objectives of the research were to determine the acceptance levels of BYOD within South African universities in relation to the perceived security risks. Thereafter, an investigation into which security practices, if any, that South African universities are using to minimize the information security concerns was carried out by means of a targeted online questionnaire. An extensive literature review was first carried out to evaluate the motivation for the research and to assess advantages of using Smartphone and Tablet PC’s for work related purposes. Thereafter, to determine security concerns, other surveys and related work was consulted to determine the relevant questions needed by the online questionnaire. The quantity of comprehensive academic studies concerning the security aspects of BYOD within organizations was very limited and because of this reason, the research took on a highly exploratory design. Finally, the research deliberated on the results of the online questionnaire and concluded with a strategy for the implementation of a mobile device security strategy for using personally-owned devices in a work-related environment

A Survey on Security for Mobile Devices

Nowadays, mobile devices are an important part of our everyday lives since they enable us to access a large variety of ubiquitous services. In recent years, the availability of these ubiquitous and mobile services has signicantly increased due to the dierent form of connectivity provided by mobile devices, such as GSM, GPRS, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. In the same trend, the number and typologies of vulnerabilities exploiting these services and communication channels have increased as well. Therefore, smartphones may now represent an ideal target for malware writers. As the number of vulnerabilities and, hence, of attacks increase, there has been a corresponding rise of security solutions proposed by researchers. Due to the fact that this research eld is immature and still unexplored in depth, with this paper we aim to provide a structured and comprehensive overview of the research on security solutions for mobile devices. This paper surveys the state of the art on threats, vulnerabilities and security solutions over the period 2004-2011. We focus on high-level attacks, such those to user applications, through SMS/MMS, denial-of-service, overcharging and privacy. We group existing approaches aimed at protecting mobile devices against these classes of attacks into dierent categories, based upon the detection principles, architectures, collected data and operating systems, especially focusing on IDS-based models and tools. With this categorization we aim to provide an easy and concise view of the underlying model adopted by each approach

Open Source Innovation, Patent Injunctions, and the Public Interest

This Article explores the difficulties that high technology markets pose for patent law and, in particular, for patent injunctions. It then outlines the ways in which “open source innovation” is unusually vulnerable to patent injunctions. It argues that courts can recognize this vulnerability, and respond to the particular competitive and innovative benefits of open source innovation, by flexibly applying the Supreme Court’s ruling in eBay v. MercExchange. Having dealt with the lamentable failure of the International Trade Commission to exercise a similar flexibility in its own patent jurisprudence, despite statutory and constitutional provisions that counsel otherwise, the Article concludes with some recommendations for reform

Security Analysis Of Smartphone Operating Systems

This paper discusses the security threats and vulnerabilities in smartphone and compares the operating system on the basis of their strengths and weakness by keeping in mind the security. Our purpose is to evaluate how much protected these system are, what risks can make them vulnerable and how to make these platform more strenghtend. Our work cover four main Smartphone operating system those are android. iOS, symbiyan and blackberry and anatomize their security environment. This paper Analyze to decreases smartphone vulnerabilities, maintain secrecy, integrity and availability of smartphone basic applications. We address to explore their vulnerabilities, threats and security levels.

Security Information Supplied by Australian Internet Service Providers

Results from previous studies indicate that numerous Internet Service Providers within Australia either have inadequately trained staff, or refuse to provide security support to end-users. This paper examines the security information supplied by Internet Service Providers on their website. Specifically content relating to securing; a wireless network, an ADSL router, and a Microsoft Windows based workstation. A further examination looked at the accuracy, currency, and accessibility of information provided. Results indicate that the information supplied by Internet Service Providers is either inadequate or may in fact further deter the end-user from appropriately securing their computer and networking devices

Smartphone malware based on synchronisation vulnerabilities

Smartphones are mobile phones that offer processing power and features like personal computers (PC) with the aim of improving user productivity as they allow users to access and manipulate data over networks and Internet, through various mobile applications. However, with such anywhere and anytime functionality, new security threats and risks of sensitive and personal data are envisaged to evolve. With the emergence of open mobile platforms that enable mobile users to install applications on their own, it opens up new avenues for propagating malware among various mobile users very quickly. In particular, they become crossover targets of PC malware through the synchronization function between smartphones and computers. Literature lacks detailed analysis of smartphones malware and synchronization vulnerabilities. This paper addresses these gaps in literature, by first identifying the similarities and differences between smartphone malware and PC malware, and then by investigating how hackers exploit synchronization vulnerabilities to launch their attacks

Cloud based intrusion detection architecture for smartphones

Smartphones are phones with advanced capabilities like those of personal computers (PCs). Smartphone technology is more and more becoming the predominant communication tool for people across the world. People use their smartphones to keep their contact data, to browse the internet, to exchange messages, to keep notes, carry their personal files and documents, etc. Users while browsing are also capable of shopping online, thus provoking a need to type their credit card numbers and security codes. As the smartphones are becoming widespread, it's also becoming a popular target for security threats and attack. Since smartphones use the same software architecture as in PCs, they are vulnerable to be exposed to similar threats such as in PCs. Recent news and articles indicate huge increase in malware and viruses for operating systems employed on smartphones (primarily Android and iOS). Major limitations of smartphone technology are its processing power and its scarce energy source since smartphones rely on battery usage. The smartphones have less storage and computational power to put into effect highly complex algorithms for intrusion detection and implementing signature based attack detection. Now in this paper, we propose a cloud based Intrusion Detection System for smartphones to overcome the issues of smartphone resource constraints and to detect any misbehavior or anomalous activity effectively