The mobile market continues to enjoy record growth despite the recession, and the state of mobile computing is shifting rapidly to include smarter devices. Smartphones will be the standard before too long, and even ordinary cell phones will start to take on smart characteristics.

And with millions of people accessing their email and surfing the web from smartphones, distributors of malware are naturally wanting to get a piece of the action. Malware is really a crime of opportunity. Creators of botnets, disseminators of spam, and spreaders of identity-thieving malware pick the low-hanging fruit. They target Windows PCs instead of Macs, because there are more of them. They use email as a way to get malicious software into those PCs, because everybody uses it. Now, everybody’s using smartphones, so look out. Smartphones are by no means invulnerable to attack; in fact, they are really nothing but small computers with telephony capabilities–so there’s no reason why they couldn’t be vulnerable to many of the same attacks that plague our desktop-bound email.

According to a report on ITWire, a Symbian-based worm has been seen in the wild. The worm, named SymbOS/Yxes.A!worm and nicknamed “Sexy view”, is being spread by SMS.

The worm targets SymbianOS S60 3rd Edition handsets, and it has a valid certificate that enables the installation. It steals phone numbers from the handset, and then sends text messages to each number containing a malicious link. When victims click on the link, a new copy of the worm is downloaded into the handset. The worm also collects the handset serial number and phone number and posts it on a remote server. All the standard precautions used for standard email (don’t click on links, use strong passwords, and trust no one) now have to apply to smartphones as well.