The mobile security community already know about PTDs (personal trusted devices), but do we know about, but until very recently, I didn’t know what a PSD was. It seemed obvious from the ad I received from one of my favorite e-commerce sites, so I looked up the device. The Leyio has been launched a few […]
Category Archives: Mobile Security
iPhone worm: good news or bad news?
Well, Apple is everywhere in the news these days … I really enjoyed the news of the first iPhone worm being unleashed in Australia. The question I ask today is: how bad is that news? It sure sounds bad at first. worms are not the kind of beasts that we want to see on our […]
Apple news and rumors
Apple is not my usual cup of tea, as there are way enough sites that make a living on Apple rumors. I recently took a look at one of them, Apple Insider, to check on a few things happening there, and I found three interesting articles, all somehow linked to mobile security.
The Android SE war has started …
These days, Android is a bit of a hot topic, for many reasons that we all know. It seems that a new device is released every week, the operating system is open source, so everybody can at least play with it and integrate low-level software, applications can be deployed, and most likely much more. Android […]
Proving code correct
Most of us spent some time in school studying program proofs in a way or another. Many techniques exist, but in most cases, their most important use it to make students understand that, sometimes, a computation does not end. Proving programs is hard, but the hardness of the proof greatly depends on what you want […]
iPhone training for thieves
Yet another profession needs to turn computer-literate, or at least smartphone-literate. Stealing devices like iPhone’s and Android devices, as we owners increasingly use services that allow us to locate our lost/stolen precious phones. In the story recalled by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the thieves were elaborate enough to think about asking the victim for his credit […]
Should we sign malware?
The distribution of mobile applications heavily relies on digital signatures. Applications must be signed before they are distributed. The problem with signatures is that we have often been warned that “we should not trust applications that have not been signed”. Although this is absolutely true, and although anybody who has followed a Logics 101 class […]
Android security from a user’s point of view
I have loaded a few applications on my Magic phone, and this has allowed me to test some of the security features from the end user’s point of view. When I install an application, the screen displays a few warnings, indicating the privileges/permissions requested by the application. Let’s consider a small example, based on Google’s […]
Application store competition becomes hot
I recently found interesting the fact that Vodafone planned to launch a multi-platform application store, which I believe introduces real competitions in these stores. Before that, all other application stores were mono-platform, including Qualcomm’s, of coure dedicated to the Brew platform. This particular application store is far from new, and it has been quite a […]
Design for security
There is an ongoing compeition in England about combining design and security to improve the security of mobile phones, and more precisely, to limit the stealing of phones. This sounds like a wonderful idea, because design can make attacks unpractical and/or more difficult to implement, therefore making a stolen phone less valuable. I can’t wait […]