Commwarrior is a
Symbian
Symbian is a discontinued mobile operating system (OS) and computing platform designed for smartphones. It was originally developed as a proprietary software OS for personal digital assistants in 1998 by the Symbian Ltd. consortium. Symbian OS ...
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 li ...
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
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 li ...
.
The worm affects only the
Nokia Series 60
The S60 Platform, originally named Series 60 User Interface, is a discontinued software platform and graphical user interface for smartphones that runs on top of the Symbian operating system. It was created by Nokia based on the 'Pearl' interface ...
software platform.
Infection
Commwarrior was particularly effective via the
MMS 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
Sis or SIS may refer to:
People
*Michael Sis (born 1960), American Catholic bishop
Places
* Sis (ancient city), historical town in modern-day Turkey, served as the capital of the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia.
* Kozan, Adana, the current name ...
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 file on a compromised phone. Once per minute thereafter, the worm attempts to send this file to any phone that has
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 li ...
enabled.
Symptoms
According to
Sophos
Sophos Limited is a British security software and hardware company. It develops and markets managed security services and cybersecurity software and hardware, such as managed detection and response, incident response and endpoint security s ...
, during installation the program has a one in six chance of displaying the following text:
"CommWarrior v1.0 (c) 2005 by e10d0r"
References
{{reflist
Mobile malware