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BARCELONA - Mobile operators are starting to feel the pinch from viruses resulting from the increasing use of emails and internet browsing on cellphones, according to an industry study published today.
Attacks on cellphones rose fivefold in 2006, with clients of 83 per cent of mobile operators around the world having been hit, the joint study by security software firm McAfee and research company Informa said.
"Mobile operators are already feeling the impact of mobile threats on customer satisfaction and network performance and are increasingly concerned about the potential impact on their brand and the success of new revenue-generating services," McAfee said in a statement.
The companies polled 200 operators globally for the study.
McAfee, together with Finnish F-Secure, has been the leading security software vendor in the mobile space, but during the last year most large antivirus firms have rolled out their own products for the mobile industry.
Even though the risk of a cellphone getting infected is still relatively small, thousands of phones have experienced this globally. Vicious viruses can render a phone useless or swell phone bills through pricey messages or calls to unwanted numbers.
"This research clearly demonstrates that mobile security is moving quickly up the industry agenda with the number of malware incidents rising and more time and money being dedicated to resolving mobile security issues," Victor Kouznetsov, Senior Vice President of McAfee Mobile Security, said in a statement.
Since the first mobile virus appeared in 2004 the number of different viruses, worms or other type of malware has reached 350, F-Secure said.
"There are cellphone viruses around, but the amounts are very different from the PC world," Mikko Hypponen, head of research at F-Secure, told Reuters.
Hypponen said the situation has improved with an update of the operating system of Britain's Symbian -- the most widely used software platform in smartphones -- to version 3 last year.
"Version 3 is much safer. No malware written for this has been found," Hypponen said.
- REUTERS
