Smartphone Virus Outbreak
Is a Matter of OS Market Share
Tuesday, April 14,
2009
Computer viruses have yet to spread noticeably through our handheld
devices, but a new study finds that a major outbreak is only a
matter of time once one of the brand name smartphones reach a 10%
market share.
Northeastern University physicist Albert-László Barabási and his
co-authors tracked the spreading potential of Bluetooth and
multimedia messaging service (MMS) viruses and predict that these
viruses will become a real threat to users of smartphones, like
iPhone and Blackberry, once an operating system increases its
market share.
Published in the latest issue of Science magazine, the authors
quantitatively assessed the spreading dynamics of mobile viruses by
modeling the location, the mobility and the communication patterns
of mobile phone users. In a simulated study, the team used
anonymized billing records from a mobile phone provider and tracked
the calling patterns and coordinates of the mobile phone tower
closest to the user at the time of the call.
“It may seem to many of us that smartphones are everywhere but the
truth is that the smartphone user base is not only small, but it is
highly fragmented into many small isolated islands, making a major
virus outbreak impossible at the moment,” said Albert-László
Barabási, Distinguished Professor of Physics and Director of the
Center for Complex Network Research (CCNR) at Northeastern
University. “Once smartphones become more widely used and one of
the operating systems increases it market share to a certain
percentage, the users of that system will all become susceptible to
mobile viruses within a matter of minutes.”
Bluetooth and MMS viruses differ in their spatial spreading
patterns; the former infects predominantly users in the vicinity of
the virus’ originating point making its spread rather slow due to
human mobility, while the latter is capable of spreading to
everyone in the address book of the originating user within
minutes. Hybrid viruses – capable of simultaneously using both
Bluetooth and MMS connections to spread – are also easy to contain
at the moment due to the operating system’s small market share and
are forced into the slow Bluetooth spreading mode.
“The understanding of the basic spreading patterns presented in our
study could help estimate the realistic risk carried by mobile
viruses and aid the development of proper measures to avoid the
costly impact of major outbreaks,” added Pu Wang, Ph.D. candidate
at CCNR and lead author of the study. “The rapid growth of the
number of smartphones and the growing market share of the operating
systems can soon lead to a mobile virus outbreak that will likely
overshadow the disruption caused by traditional computer
viruses.”
In addition to Wang and Barabási, the study was co-authored Marta
C. González of Northeastern and César A. Hidalgo of the Center for
International Development at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of
Government.
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Source: Northeastern University
Thanks to NewsWise for this
article.