Victims receive an SMS message on their mobile phone, thanking them for subscribing to a fictitious dating service. The message states that the subscription fee of Dollar two per day would be automatically charged to their cell phone bill until their subscription was cancelled at the online site.

''Users who visit the site to unsubscribe from the service are prompted to download a Trojan bot. The site does not attempt to exploit any vulnerability, instead, the attacker provides instructions to bypass the Internet Explorer security warning prompt,'' a release from Websense said today.

Commenting on this trend, Mr Surendra Singh, Head, South East Asia and India, Websense, said ''We are seeing the next evolution of blended threats exploiting a new attack vector - SMS over a mobile phone. There has been much talk of security risks associated with mobiles for years and they are now becoming a reality. As mobiles have become an essential part of our everyday lives, they are an extremely attractive lure for criminals who want to exploit the huge user base.'' UNI VK RG SKB1745