CIO: Mobile Malware: Beware Drive-by Downloads on Your Smartphone

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Drive-by downloads are coming to your smartphone, and they're harder to detect than traditional PC-based versions. Here's how you can protect yourself, your users and your enterprise from mobile drive-by downloads.

By Meridith Levinson
March 22, 2012

While Jeff Schmidt, the CEO of JAS Global Advisors, was surfing the Web on his new Android smartphone (his first Android phone) earlier this year, what appeared to be an ad popped up on his screen. The "ad" looked like the prompt that appears when his phone rings. He clicked the button on the ad to pick up the putative call, and the ad began downloading a binary file--malware--onto his Android phone. Schmidt had been hit by a drive-by download, a program that automatically installs malicious software on end-users' computers—and increasingly, smartphones—without them knowing.

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