Cabir, which distributes itself through Bluetooth connections, attacks the Symbian operating system used by several maker of mobiles, including the big one Nokia.

The virus was discovered by the French division of the Russian security software developer Kaspersky Labs, who think it was designed by an international band of hackers. The goal of the hackers is to prove that no technology is safe from attacks.

If your phone is infected, the virus writes the inscription 'Caribe' on the screen. The virus is then activated every time that the phone is turned on. It scans for phones that are also using the Bluetooth technology and is able to send a copy of itself to the first handset that it finds.

So far there does not seem to be any other negative payload.