Cyberspies ratchet up attacks on mobile devices.

• Position: Homeland Security News

The use of mobile devices is growing by leaps and bounds. So too are the number and complexity of cyber-attacks on them, a network security expert said.

"The growth is one thing, but the jumps in sophistication is what I find surprising," said Dave Marcus, director of advanced research and threat intelligence for McAfee Labs. "When you look at 'flatware in the PC world, it took years for certain functionalities to develop," he said. The criminals and spies are now measuring progress on how to exploit mobile devices in terms of weeks and months. "They have clearly learned a lot."

And it is a target-rich environment as more companies are allowing employees to use their own devices for doing work, essentially allowing them to become portals into their networks.

Few organizations are putting security policies and technologies in place on these devices. It is a "wide-open field" for the hackers, Marcus said. Tablets and phones are "ripe for compromise, as they say."

Most consumers will go to an app store and click on almost anything. There is little regard for who the developer is and whether these programs are safe, he added.

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"It is very much a free for all there." Companies have to get policies in place to manage these personal devices to prevent...