The next big threat in Mobile Security: Commwarrior.A

Cabir seems to have become a thing of the past. New threats are in already. And they are smarter and messier than ever before. The latest worm to have found its way into the mobiles of todays hi-tech generation is a code named Commwarrior.A. It is a virus developed to spread around to vulnerable mobile phones through multimedia messages and like previous instances of mobile worms it also drain batteries.

Analyst says it is the first virus of its kind, which spreads around through messages containing photos and sounds. This makes it a worldwide threat considering sending MMS messages takes little time.

The virus tries to MMS itself to all the people on the phone’s contact book. In addition, like Cabir it also tries to affect the surrounding phones vulnerable through Bluetooth connectivity. This eventually leads to draining of the phone batteries.

Until now, mobile viruses have been limited to a small surrounding and took a long time to reach global levels due to technical constraints. Cabir has been one of those, which took around 6 months to spread to only 16 countries. Commwarrior.A uses MMS, which affects the popular Series 60 phone operating software by Symbian and poses a bigger threat.

Mobile analysts predict that this worm should not become a huge problem considering user action is required to get the code to work. However, it might revolutionize the way viruses and worms are programmed for mobiles in the future considering a precedent has been set.

This virus seemed to be programmed in Russia according to some security firms. The mobile company Nokia that controls 48% of Symbian said in a release that they are ready to face the challenges of mobile viruses by taking the experiences of the PC Industry into consideration, which has had a long history dealing with viruses and worms.

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