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Crashing A Nokia Phone Via SMS
Atryn writes "An article at the Register reports that a recent Black Hat conference presenter demonstrated how to crash Nokia cell phones using malformed headers in SMS messaging protocols. Though the SIM card can be recovered by moving to a new phone, this is perhaps an interesting preview of security issues as data goes wireless." Of course, when you live in the US, where your wireless services are about eight years behind the curve, this is less of an issue. *grin*
It's time to code firewalls and applicative filtering proxies for mobile phones...
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For the first time, hackers can kill. Considering the number of people who use their cell phones while driving, a random "crash" (what a terrible pun) while trying to send email or view stock quotes while driving should be enough to push a few drivers "over the edge".
The good news is that if terrorists intend to use such "crash" attempts to crash cars or other vehicles, we at least have new legislation to stop them.
If guns kill people, then CmdrTaco's keyboard misspells words.
Just like any technology, it can be used and abused. If I were the type who didn't like the word asshole, I might be justified in lamenting:
.. would you prefer to crack down on these people, and drive their activities into the underground where you are upable to keep an eye on them?
Is it at all possible to have any sort of message board without people coming along and using the word asshole?
Any other way, and you wouldn't be on planet earth, bub. Stop whining about it, and start questionting which you value more: crashable cell phones, or no cell phones?
Society must accept the inevitability of technology as an unbiased tool. Technology CANNOT be created for good. Like it or not, as a society, we must accept that when we adopted cell phones, we accepted the possibility that they may not always work, in the same way that as a society we value the use of cars more so than the lives of the thousands upon thousands of people who die as a result of them every year.
Anyone who thinks technology puts powers only in the hands of the righteous (whatever the hell that is) is a fool. In the case of Black Hats, I'd rather the concaine junkies in my neighbourhood congregate and do their thing in the middle of daylight in the park rather than at night, in allys, if you catch my drift. The fact that this was demonstrated at a conference is a good thing
"Old man yells at systemd"
Yes, it does exist today, but how long have GSM networks been in the US? Maybe a few years at best. How about widespread deployment?
Seriously. I have Voicestream GSM service & a tri-band phone, and have mediocre coverage in Washington, D.C., but last week had awesome coverage throughout Scotland and northern England (I'm talking small towns, not just cities like Edinburgh, etc.). Even got encrypted transmission service in Iceland. But in the U.S.? Nuthin' but crap.
Maybe cell phones are more like fashion than technology: we American's like it 2 years after it's popular in London.
Of course, when you live in the US, where your wireless services are about eight years behind the curve, this is less of an issue.
Security through Inertia. Hmm...
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
CDMA is a better standard than GMS overall
What I find funny about this statement is that these two are not necessarily comparable. CDMA is a radio protocol, used by both Sprint PCS and Verizon here in the USA. GSM, on the other hand, fully describes a wireless network, from the radio protocol (TDMA), to the included services (voice, 9600bps data, SMS), all the way to the SIM chip.
While CDMA may be a better radio protocol than TDMA, it is definitely not a wireless network. You can't use a Sprint phone on the Verizon network can you? As far as I know, these are separate networks with their own definitions. They just happen to share a common radio protocol.
So when someone brings up the ancient war: CDMA vs TDMA vs GSM, be sure to reorganize this into: Sprint vs Verizon vs AT&T vs GSM. This is a much more sensible comparison. Anyhow, perhaps in the future GSM's radio protocol can be replaced with a CDMA incarnation.
You do not seem to realize the success that sms has in Europe. If we follow you, why send an email when you can call the person on a phone ? Ridiculous. I am not an avid sms user but I see it can be useful in many situations :
- If you cannot talk or do not want to talk, in a lecture for example, you can still type.
- If you want to send a phone number or a complex address, it is easier for the receiver to read it than to have to write it when you talk.
- You can reuse the same message as many times as you want.
- You can type a message and send it later.
- If the network is poor and audio not working, sms still works. (I only use sms with why brother, the antenna of his phone is broken). It even saved a man's life in England.
- With sms, you can see the number of the sender and ignore it.
- you can receive personal news and services that way.
- you can have your email forwarded etc.
- etc.
Finally if you find a place where 802.11b works everywhere with phones as cheap as current ones, I will go live there !
Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education. Bertrand Russel
Another reason for mobile phones being further ahead in Europe is that the major innovators in the industry are European. Nokia, Ericsson, Siemens to name a few of the bigger manufacturers. There are others, such as Sony and Panasonic, but they're not often on anyones 'Favourite Phone' list.
Just give me a Nokia 7650 and I'll be happy.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
My Nokia 5165 (like many other cell phones) has the ability for you to upload new ring tones and other delightful things to it. First, I was playing around with a few web sites that existed. Then I got ahold of the logic and created my own.
In my case, all I had to do was to send an email to mytelephonenumber@mobile.att.net, and it would be processed by the phone. (Great way to act as a pager, too.)
In my experiment with music ring tones, I found that it was quite easy to accidently craft a message (in my case, a new ring tone) that is malformed. And it actually hung my cell phone up.
I probably should have published this as a cool DOS attack, but then again, I really didn't know WHERE to public cell phone DOS attacks, much less what could be done to counter it, so I kept it to myself.
Play around enough, though, and you'll find your own special email you can send to a cell phone that'll lock it tight.