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

Thanks the spammers for that...

[Pig Hogger]

Preface
Spammers have screwed up so much of what was once usable. Yet most users of the Internet are entirely unaware of it. They see spam only as part of being online. They think it's like other advertising, and some even think it's their ISP doing it.

William R. James
March 10, 2003

Thank the Spammers
Oddly enough, I remember a time when closing a relay was considered extremely rude. In the early days of the Internet, everyone who connected to it took some responsibility in helping to ensure that all the Internet's traffic was routed to its destination. Some places had better connections than others and some connections were unavailable at times for various reasons. So part of connecting your machine to the network was sharing the load and donating little bits of bandwidth here and there so the Internet ran smoothly for everyone. Relays were important because sometimes a user's home server was unavailable.

Then came the spammers. Because they abused the relays, like they abuse everything else, the relays had to be turned off. They found that they could abuse the relays and cost others hundreds or even thousands of dollars, but it prevented them from losing the $10 dialup account or free NetZero account. It's like a thief who steals a $1000 wedding ring with priceless sentimental value just to sell it for a $20 cocaine fix. Old software which ran perfectly well had to be replaced just to close the hole which was so important to leave open before. Yeah, thank the spammers for that.

But that's not the only thing the spammers have ruined. Free ISPs were growing. These services weren't perfect, they came with ads which were intentionally in the way, but that paid for the service, so it was OK. Over all, NetZero's service was actually pretty good even if it did have that open window in the way. But spammers learned that they could abuse those too, and their mind-set is "abuse it quickly before it goes away" knowing that the abuse is what will make it go away. But each spammer wants to be the one to milk it dry before the next spammer does, and all of them combined make it useless. Thanks, spammers, thanks a lot.

Try querying any database which has email addresses anywhere in it. They have to either make it pay only, or make you type in something associated with an image before you can retrieve data. Why? Because spammers found out there were valid email addresses in them and started hammering the servers with automated software, grabbing the entire database, using up all the bandwidth 1000 times over, just to harvest a handful of addresses from it to abuse as well. So to defend themselves and keep their servers from crashing, database owners had to make it impossible to query automatically. Thank the spammers.

And let's not forget Usenet. Munging addresses was once considered blatant abuse. Now very few people post with a valid address. If you want to discuss something off-line or off-topic with a poster, you either can't do it via email or you have to manually "decode" and type in their address. Thank spammers for that too.

The spammers claim to be running legitimate businesses, but legitimate businesses who ask for email addresses when you download their product get 99.9% garbage addresses now. Sign up for anything online and you have to use an email address which you don't expect to keep. The trust is rightfully gone. Again, that's something else for which you can thank spammers.

If you happen to run an authentic, legitimate business, you can't even post your own email address on your web site anymore. If you do, any addresses you publish for use by customers are instead harvested and added to thousands of spammers' lists. They become no longer usable in a very short time. So even though it may mean fewer orders, and the customer has to type more and may lose trust in your business because you can't give them an email address, you have to use contact forms and hide your address. Thanks, spammers.

And what about those contact forms? They are also targe

TMM is getting lazy

[rk87]

WTF, the story's been out 30 seconds and TripMasterMonkey hasn't posted yet?

Not free to the receiver

[electrosoccertux]

Except that its not free to the one receiving the message. I get charged 10 cents for each receieved message. So if I message my mom, she pays 20 cents.

Re:VERY TYPICAL OF GSM

[Mateito]

Yeah. Bloody white-flag-waving garlic-frog-eating gsm-designing europeans.

Bastards.