Yet another wireless telephone virus is on
loose. You may remember Cabir sightings in various countries. Well...now Commwarrior virus is spreading to wireless phones worldwide via MMS and Bluetooth. Not only will it infect your phone, but will ring-up your phone bill by sending numerous MMS messages in middle of night. Commwarrior could potentially be much bigger trouble than Cabir - via MMS it can jump from one country to another easily. Commwarrior monitors phone's clock and spreads over Bluetooth during daytime (from 08:00 to midnight) and spreads via MMS during night (from midnight to 07:00). The worm sleeps at random times between sending messages, further slowing down spreading.
And of course, sending MMS messages is expensive. Let’s do a little math here. How many phone numbers do you have in your phone? How much does sending one MMS cost you? Assuming, say, 500 numbers and 0.50€ per message, that would cost you 250€. Of course, that money wouldn't go back to virus writer, but in any case we're talking about a nasty side effect here.
When Commwarrior arrives via MMS, user sees a message that contains social engineering text and an attachment. Unlike in Bluetooth replication, where system installer starts automatically after receiving message (of course with normal installation dialog), user has to save SIS file attachment from MMS before installer starts.
Thus getting infected with Commwarrior over MMS takes even more steps than Cabir over Bluetooth, which is probably one of reasons why we haven't seen distribution in larger scale. But as we know, people are curious, and there are always some people who will install Commwarrior. Especially since via MMS they seem to receive file from someone they know.
