New Worm Spreading on S60 Symbian OS

Fortinet, the IT and mobile security vendor, claims that a new worm is spreading on the S60 Symbian cellphones including Nokia’s 6600, 6630, 6680, 7610, N70 and N72 range of handsets. The worm is apparently being transmitted via MMS, with names like Beauty.jpg, Sex.mp3, or Love.rm. Users are warned not to download any such malicious software onto their handsets.

Upon installation, the worm apparently targets all the phone numbers in the contact list and MMSs them a SIS-version of the worm.

In addition, it also sends itself to these numbers - so friends, foes, contacts, and colleagues - beware! The problem supposedly has only been seen in China with one Operator so far, but as we know, viruses spread quickly.

Most likely, this virus/worm represents a re-coding by a script-kiddie of an existing virus - my experience with Mobile AV taught me that variants (rather than discretely different viruses) are what is currently prevalent within Mobile - and unforunately for us S60 owners, S60 is the O/S of choice for attacks.

Whether any real discernable threat/spread will be felt in Europe is another question - certainly numbers of Tier 1 Operators have either implemented or are implementing deep-inspection of attachments at the MMSC level, to stop these sorts of incidents. Fortinet happens to be of the vendors that can do this, and they happen to do it very well - so we should be able to rest easy.