You can’t judge a book by its cover

Last week, a lady from the sales department dropped in to see me for some help with her iPhone. She was worried because she had “suddenly” lost all of her contacts, music and emails. She had turned to a neighbor of hers, an “expert” who had told her she had “a Trojan on her iPhone”.

Whaow. A Trojan on an iPhone: that was definitely very interesting, as I know of none yet. I know a worm (Eeki) and a couple of spyware (Trapsms, MobileSpy) or other questionable software, but no real Trojan.

But, I’m sure you’ve guessed I am being slightly sarcastic and, of course, there was no Trojan at all on her iPhone (which is, altogether, good news anyway). Indeed, it turned out that she had had problems syncing with two different computers and had accidentally erased all her data. Now, I do sympathize because, personally, I have so many difficulties understanding how to use iTunes myself…

Reciprocally, I recall a while ago I scanned my dad’s USB key, although he told me it was certainly virus free because he was “very cautious”. That time, I was right to be suspicious, I had hardly started scanning it that the AV software started blinking in excitement, having found three different samples…

My point here is that end users obviously have difficulties identifying whether they are infected or not: the lady told me her iPhone was infected though it was not, and my dad told me he wasn’t although he was…

If you are in the same case, I would like to help you out with a very simple statement:

if you notice any damage (hard/ soft/) on your phone (or computer), it is unlikely to be infected

(but of course, there might be a hardware or a software failure – which is different).

On the other hand, if you start noticing problems on your bank account, then, be alarmed

(check with your kids or spouse first ;)).

Of course, this is not a 100% guarantee; a few mobile malware do actually cause malfunction, but it’s a general idea to keep in mind: nowadays, malware authors try to make money (or silently grab private data they re-use later), not to misconfigure your phone. Why would they? This would only cause you to notice it’s infected and possibly perform a hardware reset, thereby depriving the malware authors or cybercriminals from a source of revenue.

The graph below shows the number of mobile malware families per threat category. Note there hasn’t been any new annoyware (i.e malware whose main goal is to annoy/cause malfunction) created since 2008. New mobile malware try to make money, or target your privacy, much like desktop computer malware.

– the Crypto Girl