4 ms·

Simplest Phones Open to 'SMS of Death'

40 points by blhack 16y ago

mixmax 16y ago
"The problem is these problems aren’t easy to fix." Can't the Telcos just scan all SMS messages and filter out the ones that contain the malicious sequence of characters?
- blhack 16y ago
  I think the problem there is the word "just".
  - gasull 16y ago
    I think the problem there is the word "just". I pay a lot of attention to how much a boss or a client uses the word "just". Be very afraid.
- nitrogen 16y ago
  Can't McAfee/TrendMicro/Microsoft just scan all Internet packets and filter out the ones that contain viruses? In seriousness, it's rarely just a simple sequence of characters. I'm unfamiliar with GSM/SMS data structures, but based on probable similarity with other systems, it could be anything from malformed headers to certain characters which aren't in the phone's character set and/or crash the font rendering system. Most phones probably have multiple vulnerabilities.
- krakensden 16y ago
  I would imagine the real problem is getting a blacklist that is comprehensive enough to be useful.
zitterbewegung 16y ago
Link to the actual talk http://events.ccc.de/congress/2010/Fahrplan/events/4060.en.html http://events.ccc.de/congress/2010/Fahrplan/events/4060.en.h... the presentation will probably be posted here.
SoftwareMaven 16y ago
Any solution that requires end-users updating the firmware on their phones is a completely useless and broken solution. If it isn't an auto-update, it is not going to happen, unless they go to use their phone and it says "sorry, you have to bring it to AT&T to have your phone updated before you can make a call." Yeah, AT&T is going to go for that.
CountSessine 16y ago
I would imagine that most exploits like this, at least if black-mailing the telco is the objective, would be launched through an SMS gateway. There are a limited number of those onto any carrier network, and I suspect that any telco would rather shut those down temporarily than surrender to blackmail. Maintaining the integrity of their relatively closed network and the phones on their network is a lot more important to them than maintaining Twitter's and Twilio's access to said network.

40 points by blhack 16y ago

"The problem is these problems aren’t easy to fix." Can't the Telcos just scan all SMS messages and filter out the ones that contain the malicious sequence of characters?

blhack 16y ago
I think the problem there is the word "just".
- gasull 16y ago
  I think the problem there is the word "just". I pay a lot of attention to how much a boss or a client uses the word "just". Be very afraid.
nitrogen 16y ago
Can't McAfee/TrendMicro/Microsoft just scan all Internet packets and filter out the ones that contain viruses? In seriousness, it's rarely just a simple sequence of characters. I'm unfamiliar with GSM/SMS data structures, but based on probable similarity with other systems, it could be anything from malformed headers to certain characters which aren't in the phone's character set and/or crash the font rendering system. Most phones probably have multiple vulnerabilities.
krakensden 16y ago
I would imagine the real problem is getting a blacklist that is comprehensive enough to be useful.

zitterbewegung 16y ago

Link to the actual talk http://events.ccc.de/congress/2010/Fahrplan/events/4060.en.html http://events.ccc.de/congress/2010/Fahrplan/events/4060.en.h... the presentation will probably be posted here.

SoftwareMaven 16y ago

Any solution that requires end-users updating the firmware on their phones is a completely useless and broken solution. If it isn't an auto-update, it is not going to happen, unless they go to use their phone and it says "sorry, you have to bring it to AT&T to have your phone updated before you can make a call." Yeah, AT&T is going to go for that.

CountSessine 16y ago

I would imagine that most exploits like this, at least if black-mailing the telco is the objective, would be launched through an SMS gateway. There are a limited number of those onto any carrier network, and I suspect that any telco would rather shut those down temporarily than surrender to blackmail. Maintaining the integrity of their relatively closed network and the phones on their network is a lot more important to them than maintaining Twitter's and Twilio's access to said network.