Commwarrior is a

Symbian Symbian is a discontinued mobile operating system A mobile operating system is an operating system for mobile phones, tablets, smartwatches, smartglasses, or other non-laptop personal mobile computing devices. While computers such as typic ...

Bluetooth Bluetooth is a short-range wireless technology standard that is used for exchanging data between fixed and mobile devices over short distances and building personal area networks (PANs). In the most widely used mode, transmission power is limi ...

worm that was the first to spread via

Multimedia Messaging Service Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) is a standard way to send messages that include multimedia content to and from a mobile phone over a cellular network. Users and providers may refer to such a message as a PXT, a picture message, or a multimedia ...

(MMS) and

. The worm affects only the

Nokia Series 60 The S60 Platform (formerly Series 60 User Interface) was a software platform for smartphones that runs on top of the Symbian operating system. It was created by Nokia based on the 'Pearl' user interface from Symbian Ltd. It was introduced at ...

software platform.

Infection

Commwarrior was particularly effective via the

MMS MMS may refer to: Science and technology Network communication protocols * Multimedia Messaging Service for mobile phones * Microsoft Media Server, a content-streaming protocol (mms://) * Manufacturing Message Specification for real time proces ...

vector it used to infect other phones. It appeared as though it had been sent from a source that was known to the victim, leading even security-conscious users to open the infected message. Actually, the message was sent at random to a contact in the sender's address book. Once the message is opened, the virus attempts to install itself on the phone via a SIS file. As it runs, the worm is executed every time the phone is switched on. A secondary method of infection is to create a malicious

.SIS SIS is an acronym that stands for ''Software Installation Script'', the standard software installation package format for Symbian OS. SIS files are an archive, containing installation instructions, the application file (usually an .APP or . EXE fi ...

file on a compromised phone. Once per minute thereafter, the worm attempts to send this file to any phone that has

enabled.

Symptoms

According to

Sophos Sophos Group plc is a British based security software and hardware company. Sophos develops products for communication endpoint, encryption, network security, email security, mobile security and unified threat management. Sophos is primarily ...

References

{{reflist Mobile malware