SmartSiren: Virus Detection and Alert for Smartphones

Overview

Smartphones have recently become increasingly popular because they provide all-in-one" convenience by integrating traditional mobile phones with handheld computing devices. However, the flexibility of running third-party softwares also leaves the smartphones open to malicious viruses. In fact, hundreds of smartphone viruses have emerged, which can quickly spread through various means such as SMS/MMS, Bluetooth and traditional IP-based applications. The implementations of two proof-of-concept viruses on Windows Mobile have confirmed the vulnerability of this popular smartphone platform. This paper presents SmartSiren, a collaborative virus detection and alert system for smartphones. In order to detect viruses, SmartSiren collects the communication activity information from the smartphones, and performs joint analysis to detect both single-device and system-wide abnormal behaviors.