www.WirelessFederation.com/news: RIM, the BlackBerry smartphone maker, has reportedly said that the BlackBerry patch issued by Etisalat to its subscribers has turned out to be a spyware. Etisalat reportedly sent out a patch last week that turned out to be surveillance software designed to copy received e-mails. The carrier, however, said the software was a patch designed to ease 2G to 3G handoffs.
“RIM confirms that this software is not a patch and it is not a RIM authorized upgrade,” RIM said in a statement.
Acording to media reports, the spyware attack hit roughly 145,000 BlackBerry users in the UAE last week when those users were prompted to update their smartphones.
“Etisalat appears to have distributed a telecommunications surveillance application … Independent sources have concluded that it is possible that the installed software could then enable unauthorized access to private or confidential information stored on the user’s smartphone. Independent sources have concluded that the Etisalat update is not designed to improve performance of your BlackBerry handheld, but rather to send received messages back to a central server.”
Whereas, contrary to RIM’s statement, Etisalat maintains that the update was “required for service enhancements”.