Criminals will soon target smartphones

In today's podcast: Criminals will soon target smartphones; Flash memory business model in jeopardy; and Microsoft and Nokia team up for mobile Office.

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As smartphones become more popular, they're going to get some unwanted attention from criminals, Google's head of Android security said Wednesday. "The smartphone OS will become a major security target," Android Security Leader Rich Cannings said, speaking at the [Usenix Security Symposiu. Attackers can already hit millions of victims with a smartphone attack, and soon that number will be even larger. Microsoft's Windows operating system is the prime target of criminal attacks today, and hackers have generally steered clear of mobile devices. Security experts say that this is because mobile phones haven't traditionally stored a lot of sensitive data, and because there are so many different devices to attack, it's hard to create a single virus that can infect a large number of users. That may be changing as more and more people start using iPhones, BlackBerries, and -- Google hopes -- Android-based phones such as the Samsung I7500.

If current pricing trends for flash storage continue, consumers will be able to buy a 250G byte SSD for US$100 by 2013, SanDisk's top executive said Wednesday. The SSDs would be 10 times faster than any HDD, SanDisk founder, Chairman and CEO Eli Harari said. There's only one problem, he said: No manufacturer would build them. The cost of manufacturing a gigabyte of flash storage, used in consumer devices, USB thumb drives, Secure Digital cards and SSDs has fallen by about half every year since 2005. But the price flash commands has fallen even faster. Flash makers' revenue gains over the next five years wouldn't cover the capital investments they would need to make to keep up with demand that analysts forecast, he said. It's not clear where the capital will come from to build the multibillion-dollar fabrication plants required to make the chips.

Microsoft and Nokia are working together to put a version of Microsoft's Office productivity applications on Nokia handsets, the companies said Wednesday. Under the terms of the agreement, the two companies will begin working together immediately to design, develop and market productivity applications for mobile professionals, bringing an application called Microsoft Office Mobile to Nokia's Symbian devices, they said in a press statement. They will also do the same for other Microsoft communications, collaboration and device-management software. The applications will be available first on Nokia's Eseries phones, which are optimized for the business market, but eventually will extend to other Nokia handsets. Microsoft and Nokia also will jointly market the applications to business customers and carriers, they said.

Deep sea landslides caused by Typhoon Morakot severed at least three undersea fiber-optic telecommunications cables and disrupted three others, causing Internet service disruptions in parts of Asia. The SWM-3 cable that connects to Taiwan near the east coast city of Taitung was first hit by undersea landslides on August 9 as Typhoon Morakot approached the island, according to a statement from Chunghwa Telecom, Taiwan's largest telecommunications provider. On Wednesday, further undersea landslides caused by Morakot severed two more undersea fiber optic cables, APCN and APCN2. The cable breaks disrupted Internet and telecommunications connectivity to China and parts of Southeast Asia, including Singapore, the Philippines and Hong Kong.

...And those are the top stories from the IDG Global IT News Update, brought to you by the IDG News Service. I'm Sumner Lemon in Singapore. Join us again later for more news from the world of technology.