Jamming Cellphones with Text Messages

Steve writes "Some Penn State professors and students have published a way to jam cellular voice service with simple text messages. From the article: 'Because text messages are transmitted on the same signal that is used to set up voice calls, just 165 messages a second is enough to disrupt all cellphones in Manhattan.' Cellular providers, of course, fired back, one stating that it 'constantly and aggressively monitors potential threats to the integrity and security of its network.'"

Comments

URLs for actual paper

[mblaze]

A more detailed description of the threat is at smsanalysis.org/. The actual paper at smsanalysis.org/smsanalysis.pdf.

Texting phones is free with Google

[popo]

Most people don't know that you can send text messages for free through Google's text messaging service.

http://toolbar.google.com/send/sms/index.php

Now all you need is a perl script and ... hello? ...hello?

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judge a man by his wallet

what is even more evil...

[first_tracks]

You can email a text message to someone's phone, and for some carriers it is an automatic $0.10 or more a message received and the reciever can't not recieve it. Here are all the SMS addys:

Sprint: 10-digit-number@messaging.sprintpcs.com
Verizon: 10-digit-nmber@vtext.com
AT&T: 10-digit-number@mobile.att.net
T Mobile: 10-digit-number@tmomail.net
Nextel: 10-digit-number@messaging.nextel.com
Cingular: 10-digit-number@mobile.mycingular.net
Alltel: 10-digit-number@message.alltel.com

i can see how they could put in safe-guards like monitoring multiple messages from an IP in a certain time frame. but, smart programmers can work around this fairly easily.