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Flaw allowing SMS spoofing still present in latest iOS 6 beta

23.05.13

Most carriers don't check this part of the message, which means one can write whatever he wants in this section: a special number like 911, or the number of somebody else," pod2g wrote. ) "If the destination mobile is compatible with it, and if the receiver tries to answer the text, he will not respond to the original number, but to the specified one. "On iPhone, when you see the message, it seems to come from the reply-to number, and you lose track of the origin. An iOS "hacker" going by pod2g is drawing fresh attention to a long-extant SMS spoofing flaw within iOS that allows a prankster to pose as someone else when sending an SMS to your device—a flaw that is still present in the latest beta of iOS 6. But there could still be potential privacy breaches as a result—a hacker could make use of a tool in order to send a specially crafted SMS to your phone claiming to be from someone else that you actually trust, such as your bank asking for... "One of the limitations of SMS is that it allows messages to be sent with spoofed addresses to any phone, so we urge customers to be extremely careful if they're directed to an unknown website or address over SMS. As pod2g noted in his blog post on Friday, practically anyone can do this with a smartphone or a modem and an SMS gateway, sending SMSes in raw Protocol Description Unit (PDU) format with a User Data Header (UDH) that specifies a different reply... (Like sending an e-mail that claims to be coming from a different address than the one you're sending it from.  "SMS spoofing isn't difficult and often occurs independent of what phone/platform the user is using," he told Ars. When using iMessage instead of SMS, addresses are verified which protects against these kinds of spoofing attack," Apple told Ars. Security researcher Charlie Miller doesn't have access to prerelease builds of iOS 6—Apple yanked access to his developer account last year after he submitted a proof-of-concept exploit to the App Store—but did say he was familiar with the ability... Update:  Apple said on Saturday that part of the reason it uses iMessage now is to prevent these kind of SMS spoofing attacks:. It's worth noting that SMS spoofing isn't unique to the iPhone, as security researcher Jon Oberheide pointed out.

Source: Ars Technica

UPI NewsTrack Science and Technology News

23.05.13

"In a good implementation of this feature, the receiver would see the original phone number and the reply-to one," Pod2g said. "On [an] iPhone, when you see the message, it seems to come from the reply-to number, and you lose track of the origin," he said. Wolszczan and his international colleagues detected evidence of the missing planet's destruction while studying the aging star and searching for planets around it. The evidence includes the star's peculiar chemical composition, and the highly... If exploited, the flaw allows someone to send a text message with a different address on the "reply" line from what appears in the "from" field of the message, Pod2g said. A criminal can take advantage of a feature of text messaging called Protocol Description Unit while hacking a so-called User Data Header so the message appears to come from someone else. Gravitational interactions between planets are normally responsible for such peculiar orbits, and the researchers say they believe the missing planet could have given the surviving massive planet a gravitational shove as it spiraled to its... Someone replying to the message, thinking they were replying to the family member, could be sending sensitive information almost anywhere. 20 (UPI) -- A Big Freeze rather than a Big Bang may be how the universe began, theoretical physicists in Australia say, and they're looking for evidence of it. Researchers at the University of Melbourne and RMIT University suggest the start of the... The highly elliptical orbit of the star's remaining planet is more evidence for a destroyed planet, astronomers said. Such a message could appear to be from someone a user trusts, such as a family member, with a message to asking for their bank account details. Apple has responded, suggesting iOS users avoid SMS text messaging and use Apple's own iMessage app instead, TechSpot reported. 20 (UPI) -- A security flaw in Apple's iOS operating system allows text messages to be spoofed, well-known hacker Pod2g says. "In the case of BD+48 740, it is probable that the lithium production was triggered by a mass the size of a planet that spiraled into the star and heated it up while the star was digesting it," Adamow said. "Such orbits are uncommon in planetary systems around evolved stars and, in fact, the BD+48 740 planet's orbit is the most elliptical one detected so far. "A similar fate may await the inner planets in our solar system, when the sun becomes a red giant and expands all the way out to Earth's orbit some 5 billion years from now," team member Alex Wolszczan, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at... "Pirates could send a message that seems to come from the bank of the receiver asking for some private information, or inviting them to go to a dedicated Web site," TG Daily quoted Pod2g as saying. Writing in the journal Science, they said an area of our brain called the pulvinar regulates signals between clusters of brain cells as our brain focuses on the people and objects that need our attention. "Our detailed spectroscopic analysis reveals that this red-giant star, BD+48 740, contains an abnormally high amount of lithium, a rare element created primarily during the Big Bang 14 billion years ago," team member Monika Adamow said. Lithium is easily destroyed in stars, which is why its abnormally high abundance in this older star is so unusual, the astronomers said. Like a switchboard operator, the pulvinar ensures separate areas of the visual cortex, which processes visual information, are communicating about the same external information, lead author Yuri Saalmann of the Princeton University Neuroscience... 20 (UPI) -- An international team of astronomers says they've seen the first evidence of a planet's destruction as its aging star became a red giant at the end of its life. "Theorized this way, as the universe cools, we would expect that cracks should form, similar to the way cracks are formed when water freezes into ice. "Think of the early universe as being like a liquid," researcher James Quatch said in a University of Melbourne release Monday. Apple should take steps to minimize SMS spoofing instead of using the situation to push iMessage, security expert Seth Bromberger from NCI Security said. "A fundamental problem for the brain is that there is too much information in our natural environment for it to be processed in detail at the same time," Saalmann said in a Princeton release. 20 (UPI) -- U. S. scientists say they've identified the brain's "switchboard" that filters the stimuli that bombards us to identify which is most important for our survival.

Source: UPI.com