Etisalat is a service provider in the United Arab Emirates, which includes Dubai, a major international finance center. Earlier this month, Blackberry users on its network received texts from Etisalat, saying that an update was available that would improve the handoff between 2G and 3G networks. Not surprisingly, many users installed the software. A number of users, however, began to have significant problems with battery drain afterwards, which caused some people to dig into the contents of the software update.

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According to someone contacted by The Journal, the SS8 software will intercept e-mail traffic and forward it on to two addresses at Etisalat itself. Although it’s easy to speculate on various ways in which this information might be used, it’s difficult to draw any specific conclusions.

Wow, that’s really disturbing.