CellTrust Corporation Wins MobileTrax 2010 Mobility Award for SecureSMS Messaging

SCOTTSDALE, ARIZONA, USA – April 21, 2010 – CellTrust Corporation, the world’s largest provider of SecureSMS for mobile phones (www.celltrust.com), announced today the company has received the MobilieTrax 2010 Mobility Award in the Messaging category for its SecureSMS solution.

The 2010 Mobility Awards honour the best mobile computing and wireless data communications products and services introduced to the market during the past year, according to MobileTrax, a leading mobile and wireless industry analyst firm headed by industry veteran Gerry Purdy.

“We are pleased with MobileTrax’s recognition of our SecureSMS technology and the value it brings to the industry,” said Sean Moshir, Chairman and CEO of CellTrust. “This award further endorses our vision to address the gaps that exist with basic SMS by bringing a secure messaging solution to government, healthcare and the financial services industries throughout the world.” Read more

Trojan SymbOS/MerogoSMS Worms

Known as Trojan SymbOS/MerogoSMS worms are currently attempting to spread on Symbian Series 60 3rd Edition devices. Symbian is the most common smartphone operating system in use.

They spread by sending text messages to other phones. The SMS contains a variable message in Chinese with a link to a web site. If  followed the user is prompted to install an application thereby infecting the phone and restarting the whole process of propagation via SMS. These worms appear to have the capability of sending messages to expensive premium-rate numbers.

Here’s the Clever Bit

As unsigned software can not be directly installed on Symbian Series 60 3rd Edition devices by default the installation package for this worm has indeed gone through the Symbian Signing process. According to sources they were submitted using Symbians express signing mechanism. The signed installation files contain additional unsigned SISX files which the host installer deploys. this type of mechanism makes it hard for certification systems to get a complete understanding of what the program being signed really does.

Does Symbian Revoking the Publisher ID Fix the Problem for Everyone?

Symbian Foundation has revoked the publisher ID that was allocated for these packages. But does that automatically fix the problem? No. Another step is needed.

Usually S60 phones are not configured by default to check for certification revocation. This is understandable. If hardware vendors were configuring phones to make data connections by default it would customer service nightmares for the carriers. Hardware vendors just can’t assume that customers will buy data plans so the certification check is off by default.

If you have an S60 phone and a data plan then you should adjust your Application Manager settings as shown below.

FDA ruling on mobile image viewers could shake iPhone app market

In January a moment that all kinds of mobile application developers have long feared finally arrived.

When the FDA decided that an iPhone image viewer from Cleveland-based vendor MIMvista was a class III medical device that requires pre-market approval.

Read the full article here on the Fierce Mobile Healthcare web site.

Cards & Payments Australasia 2010 Day 3 Wednesday 17th of March

Day three of the Cards & Payments Australasia 2010 exhibition at the Westin Hotel in Sydney was another busy day for the CellTrust Australia & New Zealand team.

Nick, Vahid and Ramesh were kept constantly busy speaking with visitors to the CellTrust stand about how CellTrust SecureSMS can work with and enhance existing applications and systems by providing a two way secure bridge to customer handsets. One of the many features stand visitors were most impressed with was how the customer handsets they can communicate with securely need not be of the latest “Smartphone” type. The SecureSMS client can easily be installed on most older handsets. If the customer handset has a mobile phone plan with SMS enabled, chances are extremely high that they can install and use SecureSMS to communicate with existing systems and applications. Visitors to the CellTrust stand were quick to recognise this feature as a major point of difference between SecureSMS technology and the more usual approach of a web portal implementation.

Another point stand visitors were quick to take notice of was how using SecureSMS can assist in solving the last piece of the puzzle when modifying existing applications to achieve PCI Compliance in situations where mobile handset communication is a requirement.

David was kept busy demonstrating the SecureSMS Appliance and he fielded hundreds of questions about how the appliance can be implemented within an organisations existing IT infrastructure, as well as questions about how to work with the extensive API set.

If you missed out on meeting the CellTrust Australia & New Zealand team at the Cards & Payments Australasia 2010 exhibition contact them for more information.

Cards & Payments Australasia 2010 Day 2 Tuesday 16th of March

The CellTrust Australia & New Zealand team had another very busy day at the Cards & Payments Australasia 2010 exhibition. The highlight of the day was Managing Director Nick Goritsas taking centre stage to deliver a presentation to a large audience on CellTrust SecureSMS.

Again on day two as on day one interest in CellTrust SecureSMS was very high and the stand was one of the busier ones at the event. Visitors from both the Government and Corporate sector asked us a lot of very interesting questions. Nearly every person that the CellTrust Australia and New Zealand spoke to could see immediately how they could use SecureSMS alongside their existing applications via the API’s.

Wednesday is the final day of the Cards & Payments Australasia 2010 exhibition so come on down and say hello to the team.

Click here to find out more about the Cards & Payments Australasia 2010 event.

Cards & Payments Australasia 2010 Day 1 Monday 15th of March

Day one was much busier than we expected and we had a lot of visitors to the CellTrust Australia & New Zealand stand, SecureSMS is generating a lot of positive interest here in Australia.

We have a Celltrust Appliance set up and running live on our stand and the feedback we received from everyone it was shown to was ovewhelmingly positive. We had visitors to our stand from many of Australias largest corporate clients as well as from Government agencies and they all left thinking most positive thoughts about the prospects of what SecureSMS can do within their respective organisations.

Day two should be even busier for us. The Celltrust Australia & New Zealand General Manager Mr Nick Goritsas is taking the podium today (Tuesday 16th of march 2010) to give a seminar on SecureSMS and how it can work to secure your companies SMS messaging, as well as some ideas of ways it can connect to your existing customer communication systems via the API’s. If you get a chance to come down make sure you do. Nick’s presentation begins at 12.30 pm on the central stage.

Also, if you get the chance to come down you can speak directly with Mr Vahid Sedghi from CellTrust USA. Mr Sedghi is the Vice president of Technical Services and meeting with him offers you the chance to find out more about the nitty gritty technical aspects of CellTrust SecureSMS. If you have an in depth technical question, Vahid’s your man!

Cards & Payments Australasia Starts Tomorrow – Come & Meet The Celltrust Australia & New Zealand Team

Come and meet the CellTrust team at the Cards & Payments Australasia 2010 exhibition.

We would be delighted to welcome you to our Free Seminar Presentation: Tuesday 16th March 2010, 12.30-13.00. CellTrust Australia will be participating at the 15th Annual Cards & Payments Australasia 2010 event as an Exhibitor Seminar Partner. As a valued customer we would like to invite you to attend the exhibition and Educational Seminar Program as our VIP guest.

The Seminar program is targeted at Senior Executives from Banking/Finance, Retail, Transit, Government, & Telco’s who will have the opportunity to access Free education on new trends and solutions for:

• Secure SMS for payments
• Payment Security
• PCI Compliance
• Payment fraud & security
• Payment processing
• Card innovation/personalization
• Card management systems
• Contactless ticketing in transit
• Contactless payments in retail
• Prepaid Cards/Gift cards
• Online payments
• Retail payment platforms

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Global Botnet Smashed

Following up on the article link we published a few days ago “Three Spaniards Suspected Of Infecting 13 Million Computers Arrested In Spain” here is a link to a follow up article published on Australian IT.

Here is an excerpt from the follow up article,

SPANISH police said they had arrested three men suspected of building the world’s biggest network of virus-infected computers which hijacked more than 13 million PCs.

“This is the biggest network of zombie computers ever discovered,” the head of a Spanish police unit specialised in tech crimes, Jose Antonio Berrocal, told a Madrid news conference, using the term for PCs that can be controlled remotely by outsiders.

The “botnet” network was shut down at the end of December in a joint operation carried out by Spanish police, the FBI and two private information security firms, Canada’s Defence Intelligence and Spain’s Panda Security.

Spanish police said it was so big it could have been used to “carry out a cyberterrorism attack which would be much greater than those staged against Estonia or Georgia.”

Three Spaniards Suspected Of Infecting 13 Million Computers Arrested In Spain

According to an article published hours ago by CNN Spanish authorities have arrested three Spaniards suspected of infecting 13 million computers with a program that would allow them to steal personal and financial data from around the world.

Story highlights from CNN,

• Authorities arrest trio suspected of infecting 13 million computers
• The virus allegedly infected computers in more than 190 countries
• It installs a program that lets hackers steal personal, financial information
• The three suspects were arrested last week

Click here to read the full article on CNN.com

CellTrust Corporation Announces Partnership Strategy with Healthcare Provider Portals at HIMSS 2010

Initiative Will Accelerate Delivery of HIPAA Compliant, Secure Mobile Messaging to Hospitals, Medical Answering Services, Pharmacies, Insurance and Pharmaceutical Companies.

ATLANTA and SCOTTSDALE, ARIZONA, USA – March 1, 2010 – CellTrust Corporation, the world’s largest provider of SecureSMS for mobile phones (www.celltrust.com), announced today its strategy to partner with Healthcare Provider Portals to bring secure mobile messaging solutions to companies across the healthcare industry, by the third quarter of 2010. Ease of use and speed have made SMS the most popular communication tool on the handset today, eclipsing the volume of phone calls daily. But unfortunately, standard SMS is in clear text and is not encrypted, so it is not HIPAA-compliant. In booth #2317 at HIMSS, CellTrust’s Secure Mobile Healthcare team will showcase the company’s secure mobile healthcare solution, which turns standard SMS into a powerful, HIPAA-compliant tool, enabling healthcare organisations and vendors to communicate patient data via secure text messaging to clinicians’ and patients’ mobile devices. Over the next few months, CellTrust will work to integrate its SecureSMS technology into the existing solutions of the nation’s leading Healthcare Provider Portals.

Read more