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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.'"
Don't you think that there are already more than 165 text messages being sent out every second in Manhattan?
Don't they offer unlimited text messages for some sort of fee? Also, there are online services that allow you to send out text messages for free (i think you can do it by e-mail)
You could send 165 text messages a second OR you could keep calling the phone you want to disrupt!
Except this isn't about disrupting one phone - this is about disrupting the entire regional network. Just the sort thing a criminal or terrorist might want to do during or in the wake of some mal-behavior. So it costs a bunch to send those messages? So what? Bad guys can have some real (or fraudulant) financial resources when that's part of their plan.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
"It seems to me unlikely that a small number of unsophisticated users would be able to mount this attack effectively."
Who cares! Those aren't the people we're worried about. It would just take ONE sophisticated user to mount this attack.
End transmission.
So how much would it cost at 0 cent per minute ?
SMS is quite popular in Europe. Many people in some European countries use SMS more than they would a voice call. With some many people using SMS, how come we don't see a lot of denial of service from a lot of use of SMS?
Part of the blame rests on people who complain about spam but then buy things advertised through spam. Without this reinforcement spammers would be greatly diminished.
A spammer is not a hacker. Mail bombers have existed for ages but nobody does it anymore because it's pretty traceable (even through open relays)
If you think 2 to 4 simultaneous telephone calls will take down a cellular network, the thing would have stopped working a long time ago.
But... I think it's not the vox bandwidth - it's that part of the system that manages the call overhead (per the summary, the part of the system that "sets up" the calls). I believe that housekeeping does indeed take place in a smaller, and separate piece of the spectrum and the network's plumbing. Of course, IANATE (I am not a telecommunications engineer). Text messaging piggy-backs on the data that keeps the system and the phones aware of each other - long before a call (and the related bandwidth) is actually assigned to an user that dials/answers. This would be when someone who works for Verizon or Spring would anonymously chime. We can hear you now, good.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I don't buy it for one very big reason - the cells are functionally independant and Manhattan has a *lot* of cells. That means you could shut down a single cell with text messages if you targetted a single phone but a simple throttle on the number of messages to a single phone number would prevent that.
Now if you could figure out how to send messages to a bunch of different phones all in the same cell then you may be able to take that one cell out of business for a while, but DoS all of Manhattan? I think not.
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
Manhattan usually has 5+ million people in it all day long. 165 msgs:sec is only 10K msgs:minute. I'm surprised Manhattan doesn't already get that kind of traffic. Especially after a big event, like a World Series win, or a stock market crash. I'd say "terrorist attack", but the last one destroyed the 7 World Trade building, which took out Verizon a lot more definitively than a DoS attack. But that hardly seems necessary to generate texts from 0.5% of Manhattan within a minute.
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make install -not war
The reason is in the EU areas, bandwidth isn't so TIGHTLY restricted. That's why they've got internet connections better than what most of the USA has. Most people I know of in the EU areas pay roughly equivalent to what we do for a 10 mbit down / 2 mbit up connection, if not higher. (These are people on IRC, I wouldn't know about those I know thru IM services)
We've got, what?? Comcast with 7 mbit (shared) down and 1.5 mbit (dedicated) up, as the "potentially best" service? (Roadrunner offers 10 mbit down, but only 512 kbit up, Speakeasy is 6 mbit down dedicated, 768 kbit up dedicated?)
These people have a much larger pipeline to use. *NOW* the big difference is the pipeline leaving their country to go to other countries. Any bets on where most of that data gets sent? You betcha, USA.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Um, no...I have a plugin for firefox that lets me send free text messages...it works, I've used it...I think it's from google actually, not sure about that though.
In some cases, cellular services charge for receiveing and transmitting text messages, simply because it's using up their bandwidth available for routing calls/connecting calls. Cingular is an example, and that's coming from the Cingular customer sitting next to me telling me about this. Never seen the bill, but I've heard of the price. $0.10 a message, incoming or outgoing.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Yes cell phones use SMTP to contact towers, and verify the accessability of circuits, and those SMTP packets are highly flaged, and YES text messages are SMTP packets (same as ICQ and e-mail, AIM, MSN etc etc)
Arrgh! SMS, no SMTP! ICQ uses udp or possibly a tcp connection, not SMTP. Are you really that clueless or just trolling?
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Wow, this post is a perfect example of how to mask xenophobia with apparently valid facts. B.S. If GSM networks are so bad, how is it that many over-populated third-world countries get 10 times better reception than any place in America? It's fine bud, stick your stupid beliefs. It;s funny how New York hasn't even been able to set up mobile transmission in the Subway, whereas the rest of the world already has. It's ok, keep believing what you want about GSM.