SMS of Death
p2pnet view P2P | Mobiles:- Two Berlin mobile security researchers have outlined the “SMS of Death” attack which could, they say, potentially strike millions of mobile phones worldwide, the overwhelming majority of which are ‘non-smart’ older models.
“By flooding these mobiles with hundreds of thousands of malicious texts, they were able to discover bugs within the phones text-message reading software, that in some cases would force the phone to get stuck in a reboot loop”, says Deutsche Welle.
“And that was just day one of the 27th annual Chaos Communication Congress, the annual gathering of the Chaos Computer Club, currently going on this week in the German capital”, says the story.
Collin Mulliner and Nico Golde, from the Technical University of Berlin, “claimed that their attack potentially could affect older-generation mobile phones made by Sony Ericsson, Samsung, Motorola, Micromax and LG”, says the story, going on:
“Mulliner theorized that a large scale such attack might be overwhelming to a mobile network by inducing ‘ten thousand mobiles to try to reconnect simultaneously’.”
The conference ends today.
Deutsche Welle – International hackers convene in Berlin, December 29, 2010
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
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December 30th, 2010 at 2:31 pm
Seems to me that the greatest benificiary would be the mobile phone manufacturers and carriers as the older generation is culled they can sell more units and, potentially, discontinue support for legacy technologies.
December 31st, 2010 at 1:16 am
OK, curiosity got me. What’s the picture?
–Bob.
December 31st, 2010 at 10:14 am
@ Bob: It’s a representation of film DNA.
Cheers!
December 31st, 2010 at 1:50 pm
^^
…Or, it’s what a cellphone might have looked like, had it been around 20 years sooner.
January 1st, 2011 at 10:29 am
By flooding these mobiles with hundreds of thousands of malicious texts
I like this troll. 6/10
and how does one person afford to send hundreds of thousands of malicious texts to millions of mobiles worldwide? hmm
January 4th, 2011 at 11:17 am
“how does one person afford to send hundreds of thousands of malicious texts to millions of mobiles worldwide?”
@RW (above):
I’m sure there’s more than one way to accomplish that.
Anyone with a computer and a broadband connection has that capability, technically. And, if done by cell directly, it would incorporate the same methodology as other types of spamming – usurping the resources of others, and therefore, not having to pay for any of it.