Trojan gets the mobile phone message

Antivirus researchers are investigating a new Trojan horse that could prove to be a more pervasive threat to cell phones than Cabir.

The malicious software, dubbed "CommWarrior" and described as a virus by some antivirus companies, takes aim at the version of the Symbian operating system running on Nokia Series 60 handsets. F-Secure, SimWorks International and other security providers issued reports about the threat Monday.

CommWarrior attempts to spread by sending messages via Bluetooth wireless connections and Multimedia Message Service--different from the Cabir virus, which only used Bluetooth to proliferate.

MMS, a mobile technology for sending text messages that can also include images, audio or video, is built into devices from Ericsson, Motorola and others. CommWarrior, however, only affects Nokia Series 60 phones.

As MMS can be used to send text messages worldwide, it has a greater reach than the short-range Bluetooth and so could be forwarded more rapidly, researchers said.


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