Will the iPhone attract virus writers?

[GavinBKK]

The old visibility/market share argument being the reason there there have been so few malwares written for our platform leads me to wonder if this will change with the already very high profile of the iPhone?

Food for thought, eh?

[Sherman Homan]

Still not terribly concerned, the fact is that you, the admin user, has to give permission to install a virus under OS X. As you note, the old canard that the "Mac market is too small" is no longer true, but even when the market size was smaller, you can be assured that virus writers were trying to crack it. There would have been enormous "respect" for anyone who could create the first Mac virus. Fact is, they don't exist.

[cwtnospam]

The old visibility/market share argument being the reason there there have been so few malwares written for our platform...
This argument has never been correct. The fact is that everything that has a processor is a target for malware. Linux has been installed on fewer than a thousand iPods, and they don't even connect to the internet, yet there have been attempts (some fairly successful) to create malware for it.

[Craig R. Arko]

Well, the fact that at the moment all current software on the iPhone/TouchPod run with root level privileges is cause for concern. One of the things I'd expect to see between now and February is some strong sandboxing for the applications.

I doubt they will become true multi-user devices, however. ;)