**3. Computer viruses in cellular mobile telephony**

In today's society, viruses and other malware have brought countless economic and financial losses. Their study is essential to prevent losses, the Android operating system and Apple iOS are the focus of our study, being the treatment of information thefts have been more by spyware, which sends information to a remote computer and thus be able to have all the information from the phone, banking credentials is the greatest interest.

Quissanga [4] defines:

*[…] computer viruses in mobile phones, which we can define as a malicious software made by programming language that infects the operating system and is hosted in the program and replicates to other parts of the system, corrupts and prevents the normal operation of the software or program from starting.*

However, phone viruses are not well known, some are more destructive, others less so, but all with the aim of obtaining confidential information from users without


#### **Table 1.**

*Computer viruses in cellular mobile telephony.*

them realizing. For this reason, it is important to know the techniques used by cybercriminals, as you cannot be too careful. There are viruses with peculiar characteristics of biological viruses, they attack and weaken the boot system preventing its normal operation. However, the attacker has many skills to be able to use these fast viruses that we will mention later in **Table 1**.

However, it is important to make mention the behavior of cyber criminals, as Futurelearn [5] tells us:

*Talk Talk's cyber attack saw the personal details of 157,000 customers, including credit card details, leaked in October 2015. As a result, the company lost around £60 million and more than 100,000 customers, but customers were also open to potential identity fraud: in some cases, fraudsters used the data to enable them to own up as Talk Talk engineers, contacting customers and persuading them to install malware on their machines.*

In this research, we have the idea of differentiating in a very simplistic way the security between the Android and Apple iOS operating systems, which have been much discussed regarding their security, as it is already known that they are the most used systems, but we think that no matter the social status, everyone can have an Android phone or iPhone. In this way, the attacker will prepare himself for the creation of malicious "software," by knowing properly the programming language and the critical places, vulnerable to take advantage of any precise information that suits him. However, it is necessary to create security mechanisms both at the company level and at the user level. Sometimes we wonder who is responsible and we always look for a guilty party, we should think that information security is a worldwide concern, it can bring states problems, nations can fight, and companies can go bankrupt, because

### *Comparative Study of Information Security in Mobile Operating Systems: Android and Apple iOS DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.109652*

of information security failure. It is known that there are irreparable damages, some are moral, psychological, ethical, cultural, material, and financial. When information is leaked that is classified as legal or state secret, it can facilitate or favor one party and harm another. Previous studies do not show us conclusively that there is a real protocol to follow for the security of information in these operating systems, just as there is no best security strategy, so the most important thing is preventive measures. Because the moment any system is launched on the market is exactly when cyber criminals study the vulnerabilities for the attack.

The spread of viruses in mobile phones today is already a reality, several complaints made by users are noted, as well as mobile phone companies, concerned with creating antivirus to disseminate these virtual plagues. It is possible to verify some forms of virus transmission, which can be: by email through social networks, sometimes appearing as advertising, contact with images of doubtful origin, infected videos, visits to suspicious websites, unprotected wireless network without a secure password, the installation of malicious *software, the* use of infected memory card as secondary infection, although there is a difference for each operating system regarding the form of virus transmission due to its *kernel* (core). According to Martinelli [6], "Every operating system has a core called *kernel* which delimits its functions. It is one of the reasons that makes a mobile virus not spread easily to other devices, due to the different versions and internal structure of the various *mobile* operating systems."

Faced with this reality we see that it is not always the user who fails, but also some companies do not properly protect their customers' information.

In this respect we propose some viruses in mobile phones, as to the operating systems, their origin and attacks on the respective systems described in **Table 1** by Quissanga [1]:

*The viruses in mobile phones originated very recently, so given their specificity, they are not so well known, but in* **Table 1** *we prefer to mention some peculiar characteristics regarding the operating system they attack. This table mentions the different viruses, their origin, the year in which they were discovered, as well as which operating system they attack, as can be seen in the first Cabir A virus, discovered in 2004 by the company F-Secure, but it attacked the Symbian operating system, after which the fastest viruses that attack Android and Apple iOS began to appear.*

### However, Le Thanh [7]:

*Although malware is growing rapidly, several ordinary users with easy access to their smartphone lack a basic understanding of the potential danger. Therefore, we need to classify samples according to similar characteristics, as well as collect more new malware to create malware families.*
