While the world is quaking with fear over the spread of swine flu, mobile phone network research scientists are panicking over a different bug entirely. The threat of a global outbreak of viruses spread by mobile phones is reaching a point where it might become reality thanks to the rate at which we are all upgrading our phones and using the same operating systems.
Just like the course of nature, diversity is important to prevent the spread of infection, and up until recently, the wide variety of operating systems used on mobile phones ensured that viruses spread by handsets had minimal impact. For a virus to spread from one user to another, the phones have to be working on the same systems, and currently the most popular OS on smartphones is only 3 per cent.
It has been speculated that a 10 per cent threshold needs to be reached before a virus can successfully spread between users and create a significant impact, and the rate in uptake of new phones such as the iPhone means that that point could be with smartphone users sooner than predicted. Through a process known as percolation transition, if this threshold is reached, it is theoretically possible for every phone to become infected within just a few hours.
Presently, if a virus is spread via Bluetooth, it can take months to infect even a small proportion of phones, because the process is instigated manually; if the virus is spread via MMS, it is much quicker, as it can instantaneously reach everyone in an address book immediately. Researchers say that once the diversity of operating systems is reduced, this process might be too quick for operators to intervene, and blue tooth applications could be just as much of a risk as MMS.
It seems that in our hunger for homogenous technology we are putting whole communications systems at risk. A global pandemic via mobile handsets could easily be averted if we slowed our uptake of the latest offerings from smartphone manufacturers, or at least allowed the market to remain diverse in its operating systems.
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