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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.'"
165 messages a second would cost you about ten thousand dollars a minute, at the prices the cell companies charge.
Note to mods: I'm probably being sarcastic.
macslash's gone cold I'm wondering why I got out of bed at all
The morning rain clouds up my window and I can't see at all
And even if I could it'll all be gray but your picture on my wall
It reminds me, that it's not so bad -- it's not so bad
Dear Ben, I wrote but you still ain't callin
I left my email, my ICQ, and my yahoo chat at the bottom
I sent two emails back in autumn, you must not-a got 'em
There probably was a problem with your mail.app or somethin
Sometimes I scribble email addees too sloppy when I jot 'em
but anyways; fsck it, what's been up? Man how's your boxes?
My boxes is mac too, I'm bout to be a compiler
once I learn gcc,
I'ma go on and compile for hours
I read about your Palm Pilot too I'm sorry
I had a friend lose his Palm over at the airport in Maradonna
I know you probably hear this everyday, but I'm your biggest fan
I even read all your bullshit Mac news and Microsoft's man
I got a room full of your posters and your pictures man
I like the way you sold your ass out too, that shit was fat
Anyways, I hope you get this man, hit me back,
just to chat, truly yours, your biggest fan
This is Aaron
Dear Ben, you still ain't called or wrote, I hope you have a chance
I ain't mad - I just think it's FSCKED UP you don't answer fans
If you didn't wanna talk to me outside your Mac World
you didn't have to, but you coulda signed an autograph for Matthew
That's my Senior sys admin he's only 26 years old
We waited on a 9600 baud for you,
four hours and you just said, "No."
That's pretty shitty man - you're like his fsckin idol
He wants to be just like you man, he likes you more than I do
I ain't that mad though, I just don't like bein lied to
Remember when we met in Boston - you said if I'd write you
you would write back - see I'm just like you in a way
I never had a clue about shit either
I gcc'd shit with my wife then beat her
I can relate to what you're saying in your page
so when I feel like rmusering I read macslash to begin the rage
cause I don't really got shit else so that shit helps when I'm depressed
I even got a tattoo of macslash across the chest
Sometimes I even packet myself to see how much it floods
It's like adrenaline, the DDoS is such a sudden rush of blood
See everything you say is real, and I respect you cause you tell it
My girlfriend's jealous cause I talk about you 24/7
But she don't know you like I know you Ben, no one does
She don't know what it was like for people like us growin up
You gotta call me man, I'll be the biggest fan you'll ever lose
Sincerely yours, Aaron -- P.S.
We should be together too
Dear Mister-I'm-Too-Good-To-Waste-A-Packet-On-My-Fans,
this'll be the last packet I ever send your ass
It's been six months and still no word - I don't deserve it?
I know you got my last two emails
I wrote the @ signs on 'em perfect
So this is my payload I'm sending you, I hope you hear it
I'm on my modem now, I'm doing 9600 baud so fear it
Hey Ben, I drank a fifth of vodka, you dare me to code?
You know the song by Deep Purple or Slayer
its irrelevant by playing on my linux player
while I write some php scripts and play some Dragonslayer
That's kinda how shit is, you coulda rescued me from drowning
Now it's too late - I'm on a 1000 downloads now, I'm drowsy
and all I wanted was a lousy letter or a call
I hope you know I ripped +ALL+ of your pictures off the wall
I love you Ben, we coulda been together, think about it
You ruined it now, I hope you can't sleep and you dream about it
And when you dream I hope you can't sleep and you SCREAM about it
I hope your conscience EATS AT YOU and you can't BREATHE without me
See Ben {*screaming*} Shut up bitch! I'm tryin to code
Hey Ben, that's my senior admin screamin from the comode
but I didn't cut the power off, I just rebooted, see I ain't like you
cause if rm -rf'd we'd suffer more, and then the boxes die too
Well, gotta go,
The reason for this prioritisation is that delaying isochronous (eg. voice) data makes it unusable, but backing up text is OK. If you try jamming with text all you'll end up with is a load of backed up text.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Ah. So that's why it costs an insane amount of money to send a text message (well, that and a text message may mean "no phone call to bill for".)
Also- can anyone explain why data is still so damn expensive? I have a data capable phone w/bluetooth, I travel a fair bit...but I don't ever use the data service, because it's so incredibly expensive. 2-8MB runs you almost as much as the voice service does!
Seems like they could make a lot of people happy if they made data more affordable. I guess we'll have to wait for one of the providers to start competing on that front, instead of buying each other up? :-)
Please help metamoderate.
Maybe in your neck of the woods. In Canada, the last time I was involved in public safety CDPD-networked software deployment and development, we had segregated channels. So this issue never came up. We segregate voice and data channels up here and that seems to work pretty well. Maybe it has some technical drawbacks in terms of utilization rates, but it kinda removes some potential for abuse.
-- Mal: "Well they tell you: never hit a man with a closed fist. But it is, on occasion, hilarious."
I think you're really misunderstanding the issue. A DoS by flooding the cell with SMS messages has the chance of working because on-the-wire, (or "on the air", if you will) it uses the exact same portion of the GSM mobile phone protocol as setting up new calls (and other network control messages). As you can see, this has nothing to do with the land-line connectivity the tower uses beyond the airwaves.
It's still possible that the "last-mile" providers in the USA simply don't feel the need to upgrade their DSLAMs or even make full use of the stuff that _IS_ installed at the exchange until absolutely necessary so they still have a low-cost path of remaining competitive as the market demands and expectations change.
Perhaps, as you say, the telecomms backbone doesn't have sufficient capacity to provide everyone with services of higher speeds but simply comparing the end-user DSL service speeds in each country doesn't give you this information, it's not the full picture. For example, it's possible the EU providers upgraded their "last mile" infrastructure first and are upgrading their backbones concurrently, or later.
You might be interested to know that in rural Australia, they usually "skip" a generation or two of technology; I remember when I was a kid that by the time touch-tone phone service became available in 1988 in my tiny home-town, it was replacing a human-operated exchange and that plenty of larger municipalities were still stuck with pulse-only exchanges. Perhaps what you're seeing in some parts of the EU is a refreshing of old infrastructure with the highest tech available, because they don't get to do it very often (upgrades, that is).
Of course, the USA is the centre of the universe...
Back in 2000 I was writing native Blackberry applications. At the time the RIM network was Artus, and you could send 100's of short Artus packets directly to the MIN of the device. BAM! The tower went down till you stopped. The smaller the message the higher the priority - the easier it was to bring down the tower.
"We monitor our network for security issues - BULLSHIT", they monitor the billing systems and channels for abuse - sure - but not the QOS.
Several years ago I was involved in solving a similiar problem in the GSM/MAP/SS7 backbone network of a major European cellular provider/broker. In that case, there was an problem because the SMS messaging is carried in the MAP "signalling" layer, which resulted in the waste of the vast majority of the bandwidth that was meant to be used to handle subscriber management, roaming, authentication, etc. The network (which provided roaming between 100+ sizable European, Asian, and North African carriers) was being saturated with internet-generated SMS text messaging. Essentially, we were only able to block the traffic, having little control over its generation and/or entry into the network.
Clearly the people that designed the air interface made the same poor architectural decision.
I have personally witnessed the monitoring that is performed by cellular network providers. I was actually pretty impressed with Verizon for it. Our company uses the Verizon network for cellular networking of computers (Internet connectivity through a PCMCIA-based cellular modem). We received a phone call out of the clear blue one day from a Verizon network technician who asked if we were having a problem with one of our machines. Though we hadn't seen any connectivity loss according to the machine's logs, they reported more than 10,000 attempted connection failures from our machine in a 24 hour period. They said this was usually indicative of an antenna problem on one of their towers, apologized profusely and said they had a crew out at the tower probing for the failure already. All this and we weren't even aware there was a problem.