Cellphones and their counterparts (blackberries, pda, etc) have sparked a new generation of technology: the mobile age. As all of these forms of technology provide us with great features and assistance in our lives, they also attract the criminals of the digital age. Hackers and malicious programmers are exploiting technologies such as Bluetooth to allow for rapid propogation of system infections. So what’s being done about this potentially catastrophic situation? Well, studies such as the one below are being developed so that the situation is handled before it really takes flight.

“With 219 million cellular phones in use in the United States, a cyber-attack could potentially wreak as much havoc as a virus on PCs.

That’s where Hao Chen comes in.

Along with two graduate students, the assistant professor of computer science at the University of California-Davis is studying the vulnerabilities of cellular phones, hoping to fend off potential attackers.

“Cellular phones are part of our critical information infrastructure,” said Chen, talking in his spartan office on the UC Davis campus. “In some ways, they’re more important than the Internet. We rely on cell phones for everything from emergency response and rescue to military operations.”

Anti-virus researchers, such as Symantec Corp. and Trend Micro Inc., are working on products to keep viruses from attacking “smart phones” like the Treo, which are as much like PCs as phones.

Chen and his team, however, are concerned about a broader kind of attack.

Most cell phones work in a closed network operated by a cellular phone company, making them seemingly more secure than an Internet-connected PC.

But as more phones link up to data networks for sending e-mail and browsing the Web, there are more avenues for attack. Chen and graduate students Denys Ma and Radmilo Racic demonstrated that vulnerability earlier this year when they found a way to drain cell phone batteries using tiny bits of data sent from a PC.

The researchers showed that it’s possible to use an Internet connection to stealthily bombard multiple cell phone numbers with junk bits and bytes of data. Such activity keeps the phone from going into standby mode, draining the battery up to 20 times faster than normal.”

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Tags: Hackers, Malware