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| How
to Crash a Phone by SMS |
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A corrupted SMS could crash your Nokia phone and shut
you off from it.
This was the claim made by Job
de Haas, a security researcher with
Information Technology Security Experts (ITSX).
The Dutchman demonstrated the potential problem at a conference in
November, where he reportedly crashed a Nokia 6210.
The Register UK
reports
So now you can send an SMS and crash a mobile phone,
so that the user is locked out.
Job de Haas, a security researcher at ITSX, has
adapted a program called sms_client, which sends an SMS message from an
Internet-connected PC, in which the User Data Header is broken.
During a presentation during the Black Hat conference
last week, he demonstrated how a malformed message crashes a Nokia 6210
phone on its receipt. Once the message is received it is impossible to
turn on an infected phone again.
The vulnerability is tied to the software used by a
phone. The flaw affects Nokia 6210, 3310 and 3330 phones, de Haas has
discovered, but not a Siemens phone he tried. Phones from other
manufacturers are yet to be tested.
More information about this
problem can be found at
The Register UK.
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