During the Etisalat controversy, one company that has been really helpful in determining exactly what is going on is SMobile Systems. They have sent me a technical analysis of the “upgrade” which I think the BlackBerry community would be interested in reading. Etisalat.A[MA] Affected Operating Systems : BlackBerry Discovery Date : 07/08/2009 Overview : Spyware Research Engineers : Troy Vennon, David Stroop, Mayank Aggarwal Detailed Information : Etisalat.A[MA] is a spyware application that was WAP pushed to BlackBerry subscribers of the Etisalat network in the United Arab Emerites (UAE) as an approved performance patch that was described as a fix to network problems users had experienced the previous few weeks

In Mike Lazaridis’ interview with Walt Mossberg on D7, Walt asked if RIM has seen a virus enter the BlackBerry platform. Mike shrugged and said “not to my knowledge.” Walt should have known better