Smartphones the Weak Spot in Hacker Fight, Deutsche Telekom Says

Smartphones and tablet devices are the new weak spot in the battle against cyber-criminals, according to the head of computer security at Europe’s biggest phone company.

Businesses and governments have already been struggling with a record number of so-called distributed denial of service attacks, which have brought down websites from Sony Corp.’s PlayStation Network to German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s personal page. Now the ubiquity of powerful smartphones with fast Internet connections, and weak security, is making it even easier for hackers to launch large-scale assaults on online services, said Thomas Tschersich, Deutsche Telekom AG’s computer security chief.