Have you ever imagined what could happen if your smartphones/PDAs/BlackBerry’s/handheld PCs begin to infect your laptops, desktops, workstations? Virus writers, hackers (whatever you choose to call them) are believed to be involved in proof-of-concept code for malware that can infect multiple operating system platforms simultaneously. This multiplatform virus can affect both mobile devices and desktop machines!

We all know, that malware today attacks only a specific platform or application. “But with mobile phones, PDAs, Bluetooth, and laptops gaining traction as the standard communication tools, it’s predictable that attackers would turn to exploiting these platforms too. And, the threat is for real.
Companies like F-Secure confirms to seeing this malware in proof-of-concept code. “There’s a real possibility of something more than proof-of-concept coming around the corner,” the company adds in its release.The encouraging bit of news is the writers of this malware are hackers who are trying to win bragging rights for being the first to design such exploits rather than more profit-minded cybercriminals.

The most popular of these is Mobler, a worm that F-Secure first discovered in late August. Mobler infects both Symbian Series 6 smartphones and Windows. Its dispersal requires physical effort on the user’s part, for instance the user would have to take a memory card from his smartphone and load it onto his PC to transfer photos or other applications. Mobler would then try to trick the user into clicking on a file that looks like a system folder icon, for example, to infect the PC.

And this malware can continue propagating. For example, if user stick another memory card from another phone onto an infected PC, it is bound to infect that phone too. This might not spread like an Internet worm since it essentially relies on the user (though unknowingly) physically moving it from a device to another.

A peek into future and security guys see a laptop user with Bluetooth in a coffee shop getting hacked by an infected smartphone! The infected phone can detect a Bluetooth laptop and figure out whether it’s running Windows [via the Bluetooth fingerprint] and send the user a binary file. The wireless world we all love to hate will in effect enable multiplatform viruses to jump from one platform to another conviniently. The user would have to accept the file, of course, to get infected. Maybe that wouldn’t be needed in future?