Symbian phones targeted by 'Skulls' Trojan
Virus writers are targeting Symbian-based mobile phones with a Trojan horse that kills off system applications and replaces their icons with images of skulls.
The program, dubbed "Skulls" by antivirus companies, is disguised as a theme manager for Nokia phones in the Symbian Installation System format, said Mikko Hypponen, director of antivirus research for software maker F-Secure.
Only a few people have managed to run across the program on the Web and then downloaded and run the Trojan horse, he said.
"We are not talking about a huge amount of infected people, and it is not a virus, so it is not spreading," Hypponen said.
The program is the latest threat to affect mobile phones and PDAs. Earlier this month, a program called Delf infected PCs in Russia in order to send spam to mobile phone users . Two other malicious programs -- Mosquito and Cabir -- were also aimed at infecting phones that use the Symbian operating system. The creators of Cabir even created a version that attempts to infect Windows CE devices.
Like the latest threat, none of the mobile phone attacks have yet amounted to much.
