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News Symbian DoS attack revealed

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by CardJoe, 5 Jan 2009.

  1. CardJoe

    CardJoe Freelance Journalist

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  2. n3mo

    n3mo What's a Dremel?

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    First things first - 3rd FP2 are vulnerable too, it just takes 11 of those messages to "silence" them.

    And the second - as much as I support free access to information, I think that publishing such info is not so good. The main problem is that this vulnerability is extremely easy to exploit, such message can be easily sent from any Nokia phone (probably other manufacturers too), without any modification or even deeper knowledge. Two minutes after publishing it, every kid in the world will be sending those like mad. And despite what Nokia says, none of the operators in Europe implemented any filter as for now.

    And the only known remedy is formatting phone memory (a.k.a. factory reset)
     
  3. wyx087

    wyx087 Homeworld 3 is happening!!

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    ok, tell me what message to type in my iPhone and i'll send it all my friends :D
     
  4. raGe82

    raGe82 What's a Dremel?

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    Ok, so you say, that BT shouldn't publish such information. But I see that beside this you already do the same thing - no operator in Europe uses such filter as for now. Right...
     
  5. bahgger

    bahgger Minimodder

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    I'm not too sure of the iPhone phrase, but you should type reboot on your G1 to get te message to your friends for epic lulz!
     
  6. widmod

    widmod Minimodder

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    I'm just glad my N95 is uanaffected by this attack :rock:
     
  7. wyx087

    wyx087 Homeworld 3 is happening!!

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    nice try, we all know that little trick with the Android platform.
     
  8. Vigilante

    Vigilante What's a Dremel?

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    I work for Vodafone UK and any S60 handset owners on our network don't need to worry about this. We recieved advanced notification of this issue from Nokia and Symbian 3 weeks ago, and the network level filtering was implemented on the 28th.

    Not that I'm suggesting anyone should get complacent with updating their phone software, that should still be done as soon as there is an update to address this issue. But at least you don't have to worry in the meantime.

    As to the above poster, just because networks haven't told anyone they have implemented this filter yet, does not mean they haven't. Case in point, Vodafone UK.
     
  9. n3mo

    n3mo What's a Dremel?

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    I happen to own my old, but still active british Orange sim, and the exploit still works. O2 also (didn't confirm myself, but my friend says that it worked yesterday).
    Bear in mind that UK is just a small country in a big Europe.

    It is, it just takes 11 of those messages to silence it.


    @raGe82
    BT should by all means publish such info. But first give Nokia some time to ready updates and operators to ready filters. We all know that such information is gold for stupid kids (or stupid adults for that matter), and it's not just a case of resetting your phone - if you make a backup of phone memory than after formatting and using backup your phone is still silenced. Only option is to format without using backup, which of course leads to losing lots of important data. Well, you can still recover it, but most people wouldn't know how.
    And once the information about the possibility of silencing a s60 phone is known, it's just a case of a minute with Google to find any info you would want about it - complete with a list of all European operators filtering it (currently 1, plus Vodafone UK from what Vigilante says).
     
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