I've never personally experienced this before, but it is possible, the people trying to use such viruses would merely have to find a way to exploit the platform / OS that the phone is using. From what I've seen, there aren't any apps that are all that great for protecting your phone. Your best method to protect your phone is going to be sticking to software published on your phone's store, such as Google or Apple store.
Software downloaded elsewhere should be assumed to be questionable.