Research In Motion, the makers of Blackberry phones, has confirmed that an update issued by UAE's Etisalat about a week ago contained a spyware, according reports.

Blackberry users in the UAE began complaining that an update pushed out to Etisalat subscribers was killing battery life on their phones. The update was supposed to improve Blackberry performance, but after some investigation, technical users reported that it actually contained software that could spy on users activities.

Research in Motion, has confirmed that diagnosis and offered a new firmware update, designed to remove the spyware, reports said.

'Independent sources have concluded that the Etisalat update is not designed to improve performance of your BlackBerry Handheld, but rather to send received messages back to a central server,' RIM was quoted as saying in a note. The update was not written by RIM, the company noted.

'RIM confirms that this software is not a patch and it is not a RIM-authorised upgrade. RIM did not develop this software application and RIM was not involved in any way in the testing, promotion or distribution of this software application,' it said.

Etisalat has described the problem as a 'slight technical fault,' and said that the company's 145,000 subscribers can uninstall the update by pressing 101 on their phones.