There's nothing special about Windows Mobile, Palm, or Symbian devices that make them virus-resistant. It's just that for the most part malicious hackers haven't tried to target mobile devices because there hasn't been that much information worth stealing. But as people put more and more valuable data on their cellphones and PDAs, those devices are becoming more attractive targets.

And so we probably shouldn't be surprised that McAfee released an alert this week that a virus targeting the Windows Mobile operating system is making the rounds. The WinCE/InfoJack trojan has been packaged with several Windows Mobile programs, including a version of Google Maps, and a game collection.

McAfee has traced the program back to a single web site, whose maintainer says it was designed to track what type of devices people are using to run applications. But it has a ton of properties of a virus. For example, if it's on a memory card it will automatically install itself on a Windows Mobile device when that memory card is inserted. It backs itself up to protect itself from deletion. It installs itself as an autorun program, and allows unsigned applications to install without asking for permission first.

While there are a handful of anti-virus applications for Windows Mobile out there, something tells us we're about to see a lot more of them soon.

[via TechBlog]