Developing Software for Symbian OS: A Beginner's Guide to Creating Symbian OS v9 Smartphone Applications in C++

Chapter 7. Platform Security and Symbian Signed

Open platforms like Symbian OS enable a large selection of software to be developed, and made available to a user from many different sources. However, having too much 'openness' can be a risk to both the functionality of the device, and to private data. A malicious software developer, for example, could wipe out important data on a device, or call functions that could disable features on the phone. Granted, smartphones are more secure than PCs in some ways since the operating system itself is built into Read Only Memory (ROM), and therefore recoverable by performing a hard-reset operation, which is usually something a user can perform without needing to send the phone back to the manufacturer. However, an attack could still be disruptive since hard-resetting will cause all the user's data to be lost. The phone could also be vulnerable to an application that claims to perform one function, but instead makes phone calls, sends text messages, or otherwise uses the data network by stealth, leading to unexpected and potentially large service bills. And it's not just malicious software a user needs to worry about – a phone's functionality can also be compromised unintentionally by poorly written software.

Customers expect smartphones to be highly reliable, and for their private information to remain private. To address this, Symbian introduced a major feature into Symbian OS v9 known as 'platform security', whereby large changes were made ...