Named CommWarrior.a, the new virus attacks smartphones running the Symbian OS based Series 60 platform, replicating over both MMS and Bluetooth.
Symbian OS anti-virus specialist SimWorks announced today that it has identified the first
virus targeting the platform that is capable of spreading itself via MMS messages. Using MMS, the CommWarrior.a virus, as SimWorks have named it, can instantaneously send itself to any MMS compatible mobile phone in the world, yet only infects those based on Symbian OS platforms.
Multimedia Message Service (MMS) is a more advanced version of the Short Message Service (SMS) familiar to users of GSM based handsets around the world, and allows rich content such as pictures, sounds, video, and applications to be sent as well as text.
Affecting Series 60 smartphones based on Symbian OS 6.1 or newer, such as the
Nokia 3650, 6600 and 6630, the virus does not affect devices running on the UIQ platform, such as the Sony Ericsson P900/P910 and Motorola A925/A1000. Scanning the infected phone's address book, CommWarrior periodically sends MMS messages to randomly selected contacts, including a copy of itself and one of several predefined text messages designed to encourage the recipient to install the application.
"With MMS messages typically costing between $0.25 and $1.00 CommWarrior could
prove expensive to anyone unlucky enough to be infected by it. As the virus runs silently
in the background it could be quite some time before the user becomes aware of the
potentially hundreds of MMS messages that have been sent," said Aaron Davidson, CEO of SimWorks.
Unlike many recent proof-of-concept mobile viruses, SimWorks also said it had received a report of CommWarrior in the wild which it is seeking to confirm.
In addition to using MMS, CommWarrior also attempts to infect nearby devices by means of Bluetooth, similar to other recent viruses targeting the Symbian OS platform. According to SimWorks, CommWarrior is the first mobile virus to use such a two-pronged distribution strategy, which the company said may allow much faster and more geographically widespread infection of vulnerable devices.
As has been the case with past viruses targeting the Symbian OS platform, however, users are still required to accept the installation of the virus whether receiving it via Bluetooth or MMS, which in conjunction with limited MMS interoperability amongst mobile network operators could contribute to slowing down the spread of the virus.
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