Mobile Malware and Crowdsourcing

In a recent post at Connected Planet, Alex Leslie points out how smartphone owners are at risk from a variant of the classic PC 'rogue dialer' fraud; see here. Put simply, users download an app which then unexpectedly sends a lot of texts to a PRS number. Meanwhile regulators are becoming aware of the need to close the loopholes. For example, the UK PRS regulator, PhonepayPlus, has instigated a public consultation on how users should be informed about app-based mobile payments; you can find the consultation here. As Alex points out, part of the solution may depend on the users themselves, by ensuring their intelligence about new exploits is recycled into a rapid response that deals with the criminals. Crowdsourcing knowledge about mobile malware could follow a similar template to how Facebook pays bug bounties. However, in the case of mobile malware, there will also be value in operators sharing information in order to limit the damage done by the PRS crooks. It is better for the operators to attack the source of the problem - the criminals - than let customers rack up huge bills and then try to deal with...