S60 and Antiviruses : Do they even need to be in the same room together ?

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by Clinton Jeff | on October 20th, 2008 | 2 comments

Steve Litchfield from AllAboutSymbian.com posted a little rant yesterday, corrected the BBC in what would appear to be, an interview with a person who sells security software and how that person thinks we all need it and that “One of the common types of viruses we see now runs amok on the Symbian platform”. The interviewee also goes on to say :

“These viruses work their way through the contact book, sending themselves out to every subscriber who has been called or has called that handset.”

What a buncha bull. Honestly. Symbian is one of the most secure mobile operating systems right now.

Thankfully Steve swoops in to the rescue as he points out that there are a couple steps that a user would have to proceed through, to actually get a virus installed on their S60 phone:

On every single S60 3rd Edition phone (which is the majority, these days, and growing fast in terms of percentage points worldwide), Symbian OS 9 contains ‘platform security’, meaning that there’s simply no way a piece of malware could call out in the way described without warning the user every single time it wants to do anything.
And that’s assuming that the user was foolish enough to manually accept three or more explicit warnings during the installation of the said piece of malware.
And that’s assuming that the user was foolish enough to accept the incoming Bluetooth or MMS item in the first place.

I completely agree with him, and I am so tired of explaining to people that they dont need an anti virus for an S60 3rd edition phone. Even the older S60 phones of yesterday, were secure enough. All you have to do to keep from getting infected, is keep your bluetooth switched off when you dont need it, and if you dont do that, have the common sense not to install any random files that you come across or are sent to you by unreliable sources. Even with Bluetooth, the user has to be within 10 metres of someone with an infected phone that also has Bluetooth switched on. And this is all assuming that the malicious software writer managed to get a Symbian Signed certificate for his application by submitting it to the official Symbian Signed website and getting it approved from them with all the rights required, which is an impossible scenario in itself .

The bottomline is that honestly, with S60 phones, security lies in your hands. At this moment, they simply cannot be infected with a “virus” unless you allow it to happen. S60 does not need any anti-virus software or firewall software in its present state.

-Teh Cj

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Author Description

Clinton Jeff

Clinton is currently based in New Delhi, India and is executive editor for UnleashThePhones. He is responsible for all editorial decisions, and covers all forms of Mobile and mobile-related accessories. Cj is addicted to caffeine, social media, and technology. Always up for a good conversation, you can reach him through the contact form, his website, on Google Plus