Smartphone-breaking Symbian Trojan found

A new Symbian Trojan horse called Doomboot.A has been found which loads the virus CommWarrior.B onto Symbian Series 60 smartphones.

CommWarrior.B generates enough Bluetooth traffic to drain the battery of a smartphone in less than an hour and rebooting the phone can then cause data loss. The user can only avoid data loss if they disinfect the phone before the battery runs out, according to Finnish security site F-Secure.

Like all Trojan horses, Doomboot.A cannot propagate by itself. F-Secure has reported that it masquerades as an unauthorised copy of Doom 2, and will infect users who download it from a Web site. The company's Web site also has information as to how to disinfect your phone should it be infected.

Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, said last week that the mobile virus threat had been overhyped.

In a briefing with ZDNet UK last week, Cluley claimed there was "more chance of being hit by a grand piano than by a mobile phone virus."