Today we have received several questions concerning a new Symbian worm that spreads via Bluetooth and sends premium rate SMS messages.

We were puzzled about those questions however, as we haven't seen any such malware. And obviously we have not made any warnings of such, otherwise you would have seen it on our weblog.

So to clarify things, there are only two known malwares that send SMS messages: Java/Redbrowser.A and SymbOS/Mquito.A. Both of these malwares are trojans, which means that they don't spread by themselves and need users to download and install them before they can do anything.

Redbrowser.A is a trojan that sends SMS messages to a Russian premium rate number and does not use the country code. That means that the premium rate number works only in Russia. And since the user interface of Redbrowser is in Russian, it is not a problem anywhere else other than Russian speaking countries.

Mquito.A is a cracked version of the game Mosquitos that sends SMS to a UK based premium rate number. But the premium rate number has been discontinued, and thus causes only the cost of a normal SMS.

Other than these two trojans, we don't know of any other case of malware on any platform that would send SMS messages. And most certainly we have not seen a bluetooth worm that would do so.

Edited to add: This blog entry was rewritten on Friday the 28th. The original version referred to an article on VNUNet and made it sound like a journalist at VNU would have gotten details wrong in an article - when in reality our country manager had provided incorrect information. Sorry for the hassle.