A mobile botnet is a type of botnet that targets mobile devices such as smartphones, attempting to gain complete access to the device and its contents as well as providing control to the botnet creator. Mobile botnets take advantage of unpatched exploits to provide hackers with root permissions over the compromised mobile device, enabling hackers to send email or text messages, make phone calls, access contacts and photos, and more.
Most mobile botnets go undetected and are able to spread by sending copies of themselves from compromised devices to other devices via text messages or e-mail messages.
Examples of mobile botnets include the iPhone SMS attack that affected iPhone and iPad devices, the DreamDroid malware that compromised Google Android devices, the ZeuS variant (Zitmo) that targeted Blackberry users, and CommWarrior and Sexy Space, both of which affected Symbian Series mobile devices.
