F-Secure Mobile Anti-Virus Now Supports Windows Mobile 5.0

[Darius Wey]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.f-secure.com/news/items/news_2006021300.shtml' target='_blank'>http://www.f-secure.com/news/items/...006021300.shtml</a><br /><br /></div><i>"F-Secure today announces a mobile product line extension to its F-Secure Mobile Anti-Virus family, which now provides support for the new Windows Mobile 5.0 operating system. This release represents a platform extension to the already existing F-Secure Mobile Anti-Virus for Windows Mobile 2003 version."</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/wey-20060214-FSecure.jpg" /><br /><br />In the ultra-rare event that a virus appears on your Windows Mobile-based Pocket PC, you can rest assured knowing that F-Secure has an anti-virus solution for you. ;)

[Ward]

:roll:

Completely unnecessary.

There are *no* confirmed PPC viruses in the wild and propagating - only proof of concepts. The entire principle of AVs is deeply flawed and requires constant maintenance/updating which would be time better served simply being careful.

[ctmagnus]

What if some AV company integrated their updates as a conduit into ActiveSync? That would solve the "constant updates" issue as there would then be a desktop client that pulls down the updates and prepares them for the mobile device(s). But that doesn't solve the storage issue.

[Darius Wey]

What if some AV company integrated their updates as a conduit into ActiveSync? That would solve the "constant updates" issue as there would then be a desktop client that pulls down the updates and prepares them for the mobile device(s). But that doesn't solve the storage issue.

I think the greatest concern is the resource hog. Not so much the consumption of storage space, but rather, the consumption of RAM with the real-time scanning client consistently running in the background. Sure, we might have need for it in a few years time, but for now, it's largely useless - at least, on the Windows Mobile platform.

[ziggurat29]

I worked at an AV company in the past and would like to put in my 2c since this seems a contentious topic.

* yes, there are no known in-the-wild malware that targets mobile devices. there could be unknown instances, but conventional detection software won't help you there anyway; only known threats are addressed for the most part
* malware authors prefer to target popular platforms for breadth-of-penetration reasons. They know that most folks will not, say, double-click on something or whatnot, but some will, and you can increase your infection size by increasing your exposure.
* that being said, statements like 'FireFox is more secure' and 'Mac is more secure' and 'Linux (etcetc)'.... are illusory, because those simply are minority platforms. If those platforms do well in the marketplace, they will be become the targets of attack.
* Windows Mobile (henceforth WMx) is becoming increasingly popular.
* WMx is becoming increasingly internet-connected
* WMx is becoming increasingly used by consumers to store info interesting to malware authors/propagators.
* CE (on which WMx is based) is extremely exposed from a security standpoint. No offense to the CE designers -- it was concientiously not a design intent, and SmartPhone is much much better than PPC, but fundamentally this OS was not created with security in mind. Actually, in some ways it's worse than 9x. I love CE and enjoy working with it, but a secure OS it ain't. At all. Hey, NT is all about security and we see how much desktops are attacked -- imagine how easy to attack an OS that didn't have security in-mind during design.

Given that, I think it is good that it is good that at least AV vendors are trying to produce products that ostensibly will protect when the day comes that a real threat surfaces. There aren't real threats today, there probably will be tomorrow if the platform is successful and if steal-worthy stuff is gettable on in.

So, personally, I wouldn't buy any AV software for my device. Frankly, I don't expect it to be needed for possibly 3 years. But I do think it's good that the industry is looking at the (potential) problem. Hey, and some folks work at companies that insist this stuff is installed (and pay for it), so it's good that they are effectively alphas for the software before it becomes necessary for the mainstream....