SMS forgery made simple

A post-graduate student at the University of Oslo has developed a method for users to spoof the origins of SMS (Short Message Service) texts sent by mobile phone, reports Aftenposten.

"Anders Svensson's joke service means it is no longer possible to be sure an SMS is from the apparent sender, but related security fears are obvious.

"Svensson, a student at the computer science institute at the University of Oslo, has set up the web site punksms.com/ to allow people to use his service. By registering at the site a mobile phone user can select the phone number that should appear to send the message and then fire off an SMS.

The receiver has no way of determining that a message is false - the SMS bears a normal sender number and name and the fake sender never knows their number has been abused.

Svensson makes it clear at his site that his service is intended only for fun and should not be used to disturb or injure anyone. All information sent is logged and can be traced back to the sender. Svensson said he would not hesitate to deliver his logs to police if punksms was misused."

The article continues to say Svensson's current project is trying to find a way to get pure phone calls to send false ID information to mobile phones so that cell users would see a sender name flashing when being rung, but with a different caller on the line."

Be careful! Star*38.com Caller I.D. spoofing, brought by California entrepreneur Jason Jepson, to service collection agencies and private investigators, received harrasing emails and phone calls, found a death threat taped to his front door, and had his phone tapped. Engadget reported that he is now planning to sell the business and had to hire a private investigator to find the harrassers and to protect himself and his family." cf Star*38.com Death Threats.

emily | 10:40 AM | Spam, Viruses and Hoaxes |
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