Viruses in Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs)
"The first virus that attacked the Palm was not a terribly big threat, but it was a wake up call for major corporations around the world to the fact that hackers now will focus on the Palms and PDAs." Tanya Candia.
"We must not underestimate the risk, the problem is just emerging." Michael Dickopf.
"Any method used to introduce an enforceable code in a Palm represents an opportunity for admission of a malicious code." Eric Chien.
According extending the use of wireless devices such as personal digital assistants and tend to integrate into the dynamics of daily business, is also expected to increase the threats against these devices. They have already appeared malware (Palmer / Phage, PALM / Liberty, etc.) such as Trojan Horses specifically directed against wireless devices, and experts see a horizon to take risks in an increasingly wireless world that reaches further moves.
People love their well-connected personal digital assistants. But his popularity increasingly concerned about a large number of specialists who will advance to classify the various problems that might arise, and thus designing prevention policies and scenarios effective tools to deal with the new situation.
With its spread increases the possibility that these devices that fit in the palm of the hand become real purpose of attack from various malicious code, designed to destroy data containing or even cause undesirable effects in normal operation. However, he clarified that so far there are no viruses for PDA's that literally destroy data, they only affect their operating system and what more they can do is to force his reinstatement.
Most PDAs operate with the Palm operating system (designed by Palm), so it can be said that Palm has a market similar to Microsoft in the field of operating systems for personal computers. Although this does not escape danger to other operating systems that are eligible in this environment.
The Palm devices are already caressed as an enlightened white or very tempting target for a variety of virus programmers. When the number of these devices hand reaches the extent to which computers have entered the world market, the risk of proliferation viruses or Trojan horses for them may well reach a level of importance.
The structure of the system at the same time prevents Palmer and provides a potential virus outbreak. In fact, is not so easy to create and spread viruses because it has a wireless operating system simple and transparent and there is so easily for concealment (which does not inhibit its inception, only leads to delay), but this situation has changed since these devices have entered the computer network.
Palm does not use a conventional system of data storage. By contrast, is designed to work optimally with a computer equipment despite their limited capacity. In a Palm, the data are stored in blocks called registers. These relate to one another are grouped into databases, for example, represent things like data recorded on the agenda.
If you move files from one computer to make sure it is good before a review of not having the virus. In addition, a way to protect the PDAs is to encourage users to synchronize that on a regular basis. During synchronization users have the opportunity to accept or reject any new applications trying to enter the Palm, enabling them to review these applications to ensure they come from known sources and reliable.
Since a user must also regularly save their data backup so that if the information is in the Palm is lost, it can be restored quickly and easily, as the need arises antivirus for these devices (though when demand is not as high) and thus able to close the circle of security appropriate.
