At the Science Beyond Fiction conference, researchers said that viruses on mobile phones will reach the mainstream once a common operating system is used by the handsets.

Malware spread by Bluetooth, for example, said researchers, could reach all users of a given mobile phone operating system in days, whilst those spread by multimedia messages could spread in a matter of hours.

But, said Professor Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, Director of the Centre for Complex Network Research at Northeastern University in the US, this can only happen when the operating system has reached a mobile phone penetration rate of around 10 per cent.

Professor Barabasi and his team's research conclusions were predicted in the Check Point-sponsored webinar earlier this week, in which Professor Sommer noted the diversity of operating systems in the mobile phone marketplace, and said that all new trends start small and insignificant before starting to take off.

Professor Sommer told Infosecurity that, although he was unaware of Professor Barabasi's research, his own predictions and the report's conclusions are based on a common sense plus observations on previous evolutions of computing platforms and their allied security technologies.

"Parallels can be drawn between the state of mobile phone security and the situation with Internet security just a decade ago. The difference with mobile phone malware and its security solutions is that the technology is developed a lot faster," he explained.

To view Check Point's webinar with Professor Peter Sommer, click here:

http://www.barabasilab.com/pubs/CCNR-ALB_Publications/200904-02_ScienceExpr-PhoneViruses/200904-02_ScienceExpr-PhoneViruses