Beauty...Love...Sex...

Mobile worm attacking Symbian OS phones

Fortinet's security research team is warning of a new worm that is targeting mobile phones running the Symbian operating system.

The SymbOS/Beselo.A! worm is actively spreading at present, according to a warning the FortiGuardGlobal Security Research Team. The worm, which at present is most common in China, has been spreading worldwide and does not appear confined to any one carrier.

Once a mobile phone is infected, the worm then sends itself via viral MMS to all the other phone numbers in the contact list, and to other apparently randomly generated mobile phones in China.

The infected MMS disguises itself as a multimedia file with an evocative name: either Beauty.jpg, Sex.mp3 or Love.rm. The mobile user is then prompted to install a file with a randomly generated name, which will then infect their phone in turn.