[microcola]

Breaking news on the latest News Websites.
Security researchers made public an exploit for many Nokia handsets that enables remote attackers to disable the ability to send and receive text messages.
A single malformed SMS message can prevent some handsets from sending and receiving further SMS and MMS messages, security researchers warn.
Once infected, the phone has to be factory-reset to restore text message capabilities.
Nokia has not responded to inquiries as of press time, but this exploit could possibly receive a patch through an over-the-air firmware update. Additionally, the exploit could be spotted and stopped at the carrier level by blocking messages with the malicious formatting.
This known as "Curse of silence"
Is there anything I can do to block this attack on my N95 phone?
Can I please have a quick response to this message from a qualified Nokia Support technician?

Message Edited by microcola on 02-Jan-2009 12:10 AM

[microcola]

Affected phones:-
E90,70,71,65,62,61,50,60,66,51,
N90,72,70,93,92,91,95,82,81,76,91,80,77,73,71,
5500,3250,6124,6121,6120,6110,5700,6682,6681,6680,6630

Attackers can specially format an e-mail to be sent as an SMS by setting the message's Protocol Identifier to "Internet Electronic Mail." If the message contains more than 32 characters, certain S60 devices will not be able to receive other SMS or MMS messages. Depending on the handset, the exploit can damage the targeted device with a single message, F-Secure said.

The exploit can potentially affect millions of handsets, including UIQ devices and handsets running S60 2nd Edition Feature Packs 2 and 3, S60 3rd Edition, and 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1. The malicious message can be sent from almost any device capable of sending SMS as "Internet Electronic Mail."

[okinawa]

I think Nokia takes security very seriously at all phases of the mobile communication systems development process.


Once testing and analysis of the alleged issues,communication can be made.

I think Nokia is not aware of any malicious incidents as its
committed to continuously develop its products and services offerings to ensure a positive user experience.

[microcola]

I found this information on the Newsnow uk nokia area.

[lena_kiev]

Details of the vulnerability:

http://berlin.ccc.de/~tobias/cos/s60-curse-of-silence-advisory.txt

[cryptonium]

I was affected yesterday by this problem on my N95 8GB. Suddenly I get calls from people saying I'm not replying to their SMS. I tried sending myself a couple of sms which never arrived I even tried MMS, same thing. Sending is working fine.

I tried turning the phone off and on, and doing a soft reset. Didn't work. I tried restoring factory settings, didn't work.

The only thing that worked was a hard reset (*#7370#) which wipes everything and formats the C drive.

Before I did the hard reset, I backed up my memory to mass memory using the built-in Memory application and then hoped for the best and did the reset.

After the phone finished doing its thing, I was able to receive SMS.

Now I was faced with the decision whether to restore my backup which might restore the problem again because I backed up after I was having it.

But, thankfully, this was not the case. The backup restored most of my things (Nokia should really fix the backup so that it really backs up *everything*, many applications were not restored) and sms is working fine.

I hope I won't have this problem again because there was absolutely no indication of it like the flashing envelope that I read about or the popup message that there's not enough space for receiving messages (although I got these two things *after* doing the hard reset and solving the problem).

I hope this is useful to someone!

Ahmad

[microcola · Accepted solution]

Nokia Fixes 'Curse Of Silence' Exploit The vulnerability could crash millions of Nokia handsets' SMS system with a single malformed text message. By Marin Perez InformationWeek January 28, 2009 07:53 PM Nokia (NYSE: NOK) has released a fix for the "Curse of Silence" exploit, a denial-of-service attack that could potentially shut down millions of phones' SMS systems. The exploit enables malicious programmers to specially format an e-mail to be sent as a text message by setting the message's Protocol Identifier to "Internet Electronic Mail." If the message contains more than 32 characters, certain S60 devices would not be able to receive other SMS or multimedia messages. Depending on the handset, the vulnerability could damage the targeted phone with a single message.

Millions of handsets were potentially vulnerable to this exploit, including UIQ devices and handsets running S60 2nd Edition Feature Packs 2 and 3, S60 3rd Edition, and 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1. Nearly any device capable of sending SMS as "Internet Electronic Mail" can send a malicious message.

Users who are vulnerable to this exploit can download an SMS Cleaner from Nokia. Once installed, the application will cleanse the device of malformed messages and restore the functionality of the messaging system. Once the application has completed the process, it will restart the phone and uninstall itself.

The exploit was discovered by researcher Tobias Engel of F-Secure, and it was made public at the Chaos Communication Congress event last year. The security firm said it made Nokia aware of the exploit months before it was exposed, and it sold software that protected users from the vulnerability.

While there hasn't been a widespread attack on smartphones, most security experts believe it's a matter of time with vulnerabilities showing up for high-profile devices like the iPhone 3G and the T-Mobile G1. InformationWeek recently took a look at how enterprises can incorporate smartphones to boost productivity while making sure the data is secured, and the report can be downloaded here

[cryptonium]

That's great news, now I don't have to reset my phone everytime someone sends me one of those messages.

Thanks a lot for posting this, I'm sure it'll be useful to many people.

[lena_kiev]

> Nokia Fixes 'Curse Of Silence' Exploit

It's not a fix. It's a temporary workaround. Attacked phone doesn't show anything, so incoming SMS are silently lost.

> it made Nokia aware of the exploit months before it was exposed

So, Nokia doesn't intend to release fixed firmware?