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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*
I remeber the days when a phone was actually used to call with, damn i feel old now...
Wax-Museum Fire Results In Hundreds Of New Danny DeVito Statues
Isn't this extremely old news?
-- If no truths are spoken then no lies can hide --
once the nokia Netbsd port is done, we'll be able to protect our phones using ipf (or maybe even a pf port, if the ipf license still isn't to your liking) and should be fine.
-f
www.blackant.net
I just got back from India and Europe and am thoroughly embarrassed by our government's and wireless carriers' inability to play ball with the rest of the world. At least AT&T finally got the clue, I hope.
This talks about crashing a phone via SMS, but what about devices on CDPD or GPRS like those road signs or weather telemetry, or even electric meters in some locales. That's not only on the wireless network but on the IP network. Has anyone tried to muck with those devices yet? On most CDPD and GPRS plans the customer pays for each byte transmitted, what if someone just streams data towards a customer to run up their bill?
It's time to code firewalls and applicative filtering proxies for mobile phones...
{{.sig}}
So I guess the HandSpring Visor GSM phone I have with GSM service via Voicestream dosen't exist???
I thought nokia phones already shipped worms out-of-the-box.
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.
[US] wireless services are about eight years behind the curve
Those who implement later can implement newer standards w/out obsoleting(and thus pissing off) all the existing users of the cellphone network.
when all you need to do is throw the phone to the pavment?
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
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"
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.
I mean, look at this logo on a nokia phone. As soon as you see this logo on a phone, you know trouble is coming. I think it is some sort of curse :)
Btw, if you actually want this logo, go here.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
but in real life most of the US has just as good of coverage as Europe.
You obviously haven't tried using the same phone in both the U.S. and Europe. Get a tri-band GSM phone, take it to any large city in Europe, and you'll see you get much better coverage than in NYC/someother U.S. city.
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This is exactly why these new phone PDAs worry me. You've only got to have a copy of Outlook Express running and your phone will call everyone in your Address Book or send them frisky messages.
Though my grandma might like to receive 'How are you sexy legs?', I'm not sure my boss would be quite as accepting.. (and if he is, I should quit)
mogorific carpentry experiments
behind the cell-curve curve I live in Norway(5 mill +large country) and we have GSM coverage virtualy on every mountain and wally(real walleys not like those puny US ones, and the UMTS network are about to, or has been opened Kaptein N
"This phone has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down...if the problem persists, please call the vendor"....
Hahahahahaha...{sniff}....hehehe.
What is with the Grey screen of death comment being modded as overrated?
Geez, you'd think you would have to be rated first.
Maybe that should be submitted as a bug?
You can't fix the moderators who do that kind of stuff (maybe spayed or neutered) but can you fix the system?
Oh, well, don't worry, be happy..la la laaa
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
Remember standardise early, but not too early.
;)
An American friend one pointed out to me that the USA has the benefit of inventing many new technologies, and being the first to implement a massive number of them...
...This of course means that the USA tends to implement version 1.0 all across the country, and when you've covered an area that big with version 1.0, version 2.0 is gonna be a long time coming
Steve
Enjoy Y2K? Roll-on Year 2037!
Hmm, my current cell phone is in fact GSM, and every US city I've been to has had good coverage. Oh I agree that GSM doen'st have the best coverage, but it is there. GSM is not very common in the US, and there is still a lot of coverage.
And remember to differenciate between coverage in sparesly populated areas with densely populated areas. (NYC I know is dense, but I wouldn't want to visit there so you point is lost to me...)
It's probably not true that Europe is ahead because they have a standard system; as far as I can tell, they are ahead because it became fashionable in the boom of the late 80's in London particularly to have a cell phone; partly because it was a way of doing more business for the brokers- it quickly became a status symbol. A fairly affordable it became too as it grew rapidly among the city and top businessmen and filtered its way down to basically everyone.
The fashion made the economics look better, and that in turn drove more manufacturers to enter the market and compete, driving the price down further.
The other feature that killed off the other mostly non-digital systems was security. After the 'squidgy' tape loads of people would only get digital, particularly Prince Charles- and the GSM phones were a convenient digital standard to go for at that time.
Britain is an ideal place for cell phones- the population density is pretty high, so less cells are required; most people I know have a cell phone in britain. Many of them don't have a fixed line at all anymore.
Incidentally, there IS a satellite phone system- Iridium, last time I checked it was very expensive, didn't work indoors or in cities, had low quality; and the handsets are really heavy.
The military loves them.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"- Is it at all possible to have any sort of technology without assholes coming along and ruining it for everyone
Who's the bigger asshole? The one who exploits flaws in products or the one that releases products without checking for flaws that could be exploited?One could say that the "black hats" are really "white hats" in demonstrating flaws so that they do get fixed (in reality there are shades of gray in between, depending on what the discoverer does with that information).
Of course, if Microsoft had their way, we wouldn't even know about flaws such as this and have to put our faith in the vendors fixing these "secret" flaws (read: Ralph Nadar's Unsafe at any Speed). Of course, where's the motivation to fix flaws that the public doesn't know about?
I live in Minnesota, about 3.5 million people, and about twice as much land as Norway. And MN is fairly heavily populated compared to many nearby states. (which also happen to be larger) covering a valley isn't that difficult from an engeering standpoint, just put a tower there. Covering a flat field of 100 miles profitably is extreamly diffiult if the entire population of the field is less then 75. I happen to know someone who lives in that exact situation.
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.
Bring back the old tin cans connected by string I say...
I once crashed my friend's Alcatel One Touch Easy by flooding his phone from mtnsms.com...
Nevrar
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
how is this a troll? please, if you can't mod well, then just mod up...
A: None. The Universe spins the bulb, and the Zen master merely stays out of the way.
Last time I checked the UK is in Europe, and I know of no network in the UK where you pay per call, when roaming in France, Spain, Portugal and Greece I have also always payed per minute. Where did this idea we pay per call come from?
Is this new? I have seen this happen a lot, and not just with nokia. The special characters from phillip's phones can crash quite a few phones. Alcatel seem to be one of the worst for crashing. Some phones seem to be fine, but an't delete the message from the sms through to the phone not working till the message is deleted from the sms on another phone.
It is fairly widely available in urban areas.
Interface-wise most CDPD adapters seem to act as network cards; IBM at least also made a CDPD modem that actually had a modem interface, but it was fairly large.
fencepost
just a little off
Yes, you *can* use a Sprint phone on the VZW network (sort of). The difference is this:
CDMA (as Bell Atlantic Mobile implemented it) runs on 800mhz.
PCS (As Sprint & other parts of the now-VZW implemented it) runs on 1900mhz.
The new VZW phones that are "Tri-Mode" run on Analog, CDMA/800 and CDMA/1900. It's the same stuff, just a different frequency.
So yes, they're interoperable (sort of!) If there's no PCS service in your area, you're screwed trying to use a Sprint phone in a VZW area. A VZW area in a non-PCS area, however, tries CDMA/800. If that doesn't work, then it drops down to analog. There's almost _always_ analog service (in fact, I've never been completely without service anywhere in the US!)
--NBVB
It's interesting that the people who have phones with text messaging find it extremely useful where as those who don't have it shrug it off with "I don't need no stinkin' text-messaging WAP shit", not even seeming to know what they are talking about, since WAP has absolutely nothing to do with text messaging and SMS messages.
Personally, I find SMS messages extremely convenient in very much the same way as email is convenient. It's a lot less intrusive than a phone call since it doesn't demand the receivers attention RIGHT NOW. It's quiet and more private, you can write and read SMS's anywhere without disturbing other people or other people disturbing you. You can use it for services. Send "FIND Joe Sixpack" to number 400 and you get the address and phone number of Joe Sixpack in return. Send "WEATHER Helsinki" and you get the latest weather forecast for the Helsinki area.
I worked in Singapore for six weeks last summer and it was extremely convenient to just bring my normal cell phone with me from Finland and everything working without any reconfiguration. Phone book entries, caller id, text messages, data. I used the phone to check my email with my Palm Pilot, Finnish news, Forumla 1 results riding home from work in a cab in the night etc.
I'm not saying that everything should be crammed into a cellular phone. Some things work better in a laptop or a PDA if you want it mobile. The point is that things like SMS and WAP, which are totally basic features of GSM phones, are quite useful and have their own place. Instead of silly "I don't need no stinkin' text messaging WAP shit on my phone" outbursts, you might want to try it out. You just might discover how nice it is and how well it works!
Actually, it seems that the situation is reversed in this case. GSM uses a less-advanced technology (TDMA) than many US networks (CDMA). Europe/Asia/Africa have opted to standardize this older system, while some US carriers have gone ahead and adopted more advanced but incompatible systems. As we've got no expectations of compatibility (even when switching from one company to another), it's easier to skip to newer tech.
I don't entirely agree with the US companies' decision here, but I do think it may have some unexpected benefits. For one, we may be able to move in with a much more advanced 3G without being tied down by a whole lot of backwards-compatibility concerns. For another, it may turn out that the focus on standardized networks becomes less and less important as technology becomes more adaptable. The price and flexibility of wireless tech have been plunging and exploding, respectively. It may turn out that compatibility is more effectively acheived by cheap Taiwanese chipsets than by standardized networks.
Personally, having caught a glimpse of the projected cost of 3G (for not-terribly impressive data rates, and only in the cities), I'm skeptical of the whole project. I think the next generation of data/phone tech will take its cues from 802.11 tech, and GSM will become a relic. This is obviously a few years off, though. In the mean time, we Americans just have to rent phones when we get off the plane (not a terrible deal when you consider international roaming charges, I'm told.)
As to "America gets stuck on 1.0", there's plenty of precedent for the opposite; the Minitel in France (outmoded by the web) and analog HDTV in Japan. Sometimes our stubborness is actually an asset.
Population densities are very low in the US, to there day there are many miles where there is no coverage on any system. (Unless there is a satalite system now)
Australia uses multiple systems, but now supports mainly CDMA and GSM. Which is more popular? CDMA is better for covering distance - and please (unless you are posting from antartica) don't underestimate the issues faced in Australia. We have a land mass 2/3 the size of the US, but with a population of 18 million.
GSM is locked in by design to a 35 Km radius around the base station. Not an issue in say, NY, London or Europe for that matter. A big issue in Oz where your neighbour might be further away than that. Telstra (the major teleco in Australia) have modified GSM transmitters to provide a second 35-70 Km ring of coveravge from a base station. In outback Australia, you can easily get 70 km line of sight to a tower.
Despite all these limitations, GSM still wins hands down. The biggest reason? Competition I think. Being able to change service provider with a change of SIM card, rather than handset.
Plus the provision of enough features above and beyond phone - SMS messaging. Although primitive, it was flexible enough to make your phone a pager and message service in one.
In hindsight, the bandwidth limitations (9600 baud) and absence of packet radio (always on rather than dial in) features weren't enough of a liability to hold back its initial rollout.
You might call it the microsoft or VHS solution - near enough, good enough without actually being the best.
MIchael
There is no cryptographic solution to the problem where the intended receiver and the attacker are the same entity.
I'd say having a standardised system helped in many ways. We got down the prices of handsets very quickly. We had instant competition. And people could switch from one operator to another just by switching SIM-card. They nedn't throw away the whole phone, and change to another system.
Having a standardised system across the patchwork of countries which Europe is is also beneficial. Roaming works across the continent worked out of the box. If every country had gone for their own system, that wouldn't have happened.
Europe chose to select the mobile standard proposal out of technical merit, rather than political or national reasons. Which is a triumph for techies over politicians, I guess.
In the Nordic countries, stock broker fashions had very little to do with the very high mobile penetration we have here. Rather, ordinary people saw that the stuff worked, that coverage was good, it was easy to use, not that expensive, and it was easy to figure out what your calls would cost. You can get nearly 100% of the population to want a mobile phone if you only sell it as a yuppie (or drug dealer) toy.
London status symbols undoubtably contributed to the popularity of mobile phones (that's what we call 'em ;-) but far more important is the pricing model used in the UK (and throughout most of Europe, I imagine).
:-)
We use "callING party pays", and the US uses "callED party pays".
So we don't ever pay for incoming calls (unless we go to another country) because the person calling you takes the cost hit (we have different number ranges to distinguish landlines from mobiles from porn from freephone, etc).
This encourages uptake because for the user, the initial cost to run is very little - that's the incentive to buy.
Once you have the phone, mind you, they run rings around you with all sorts of odd pricing - I, for example, can call the USA and Australia for the same price as a UK landline. In the evening, this costs me 3 cents, in the daytime, 50. Madness
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.
I'd probably argue a lot of Gen 3 stuff is heavily influenced by the Asian markets, a lot more on the uptake than the American cellular market, and where they already have cellulars with data capacity of 2mbps.
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
Fact of the matter is the new cell phone feature used to be a size decrease. You CAN'T decrease the size anymore without running into huge issues -- like someone swallowing it or something.
Technology inside keeps decreasing, and there isn't much point in leaving empty space. Batteries are heavy, so you really don't want to add much more volume to it. Whats that leave? More and faster chips with neat new features that may or may not be useless.
I'm not a cellphone owner, nor do I intend to become one... atleast until my landline becomes more expensive and cellphones.
Rod Taylor
And don't say it's to get lower calling rates, because most cellular rates here in Australia at least would make your jaw drop with their (low) cost.
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
GSM is a technical solution to the problem of how do you keep the service inside your countries borders. This politial requirement makes for a very bad choice in places where you need huge coverage and have no problem of cross border calls. GSM is also only cost effective if you have a high density of people. The small cell sizes of GSM make it impossable to cover large rural areas effectively.
I have the feeling that no matter how much they check, something will (almost) always slip by. When the technology is complicated enough, the product will always be released with bugs, sometimes exploitable. I don't think it would be appropiate to label the developers as bigger assholes than the exploiters.
If you read the article, you would have known that Nokea has been aware of this problem for a while and aparently has done nothing to correct it. And this is not a matter of a bug that causes the phone to drop a connection; the phone becomes permantly useless.
Besides, an explot like this is something that should have been looked for. Why? There are several examples of "malformed data" causing problems with software (most notably web browsers).
Note that I didn't say white hats or hackers were the assholes. The black hats, script kiddies, and other criminals who misuse and abuse technologies are the assholes.
.Net/Passport stuff. Nokea seems to being taking the same route here. The linked article suggests that Nokea knew about the problem but didn't do anything about it. Sounds like Microsoft's plan, doesn't it?
You didn't really say much at all, just that you wondered why "assholes" must ruin new technology. You did not differentiate between those that find flaws or the ones that explot flaws for badness.
How this ever became a Microsoft bashing thread is beyond me. Will it gain you karma?
I mentioned Microsoft as an example. Microsoft wants security flaws kept under cover (see this story), presumably to prevent a bad light from being put on their products, especially with the "just trust us" idea of their
It is very rare I dont get a full signal, indoors or outdoors, in a car, in a tunnel etc. Anywhere in the UK - be it a field in shropshire or the tower bridge.
The only place I have noticed my lack of signal, in the last 4 years, was in a gully with walls arround me, a near steep ice slope above & below me, and behind me about 500m to another hill.
When I got to the top I had a signal perfectly again.
"Been on a bus / train lately? SMS is BLOODY intrusive"
I ride the subway to and from work every day. SMS is usually two quiet short beeps whereas a phonecall is a 60 second ring while the person looks for the damn phone. Sure, some have more annoying SMS beeps and sure, some even have button beeps on but in 95% of the cases, they don't.
As a whole, I'd definitely say SMS is less intrusive!