Hackers cracking mobile phones, warn experts

Much to the discomfort of mobile users, hackers, who are already wrecking websites and e-mails, are now targeting cell phones as well. Hackers are intruding mobile phones using hacking tools like spyware and spoofing, according to cyber experts.

Spyware is a tool which manipulates short message service (SMS) and allows them to be read by others, while spoofing, replaces mobile number of sender’s message,

A hacker sends an SMS to the targeted person. The person opens the message, installing spyware onto the device. The spyware, unknown to the victim, takes the SMS and forwards it to the hacker.Once installed, the hacker can monitor the ‘compromised’ phone call details and can even listen to the calls made or received by the user, However, it’s very difficult for the user to find out whether his/her phone has been hacked.

Besides spyware, SMS spoofing is another tool which hackers are widely using.Spoofing is used for changing the identity of source of SMS either with text or any desired number. "SMS Spoofing" has been successfully tested by the Pune-based Asian School of Cyber Laws (ASCL), which is the pioneering institute in the field of education, training and consultancy in cyber laws, cyber crime investigations and information security. The Director of ASCL Rohas Nagpal said that the school conducted an experiment at the national and international levels wherein they were able to successfully spoof SMS messages and make them appear to come from other person's cellular phone.

The Asian School of Cyber Law on its website stated an incident where “a young lady received an SMS from her husband’s cell phone informing her that he had had an accident and was at the hospital and urgently needed money. On receiving the SMS, she rushed out of the house with the money. She was attacked and robbed by the person, who had sent her the spoofed SMS.”

bibliography: www.hindu.com [Indian Newspaper]

Mobile Hacking, Spoofing and Spyware: WARNING

Your attention please

Cellular data services and applications are being widely deployed, they become attractive targets for attackers, who could exploit unique vulnerabilities in cellular networks, mobile devices, and the interaction between cellular data networks and the Internet. Such an attack, which surreptitiously drains mobile devices’ battery power up to 22 times faster and therefore could render these devices useless before the end of business hours. This attack targets a unique resource bottleneck in mobile devices (the battery power) by exploiting an insecure cellular data service (MMS) and the insecure interaction between cellular data networks and the Internet (PDP context retention and the paging channel). The attack proceeds in two stages. In the first stage, the attacker compiles a hit list of mobile devices — including their cellular numbers, IP addresses, and model information — by exploiting MMS notification messages. In the second stage, the attacker drains mobile devices’ battery power by sending periodical UDP packets and exploiting PDP context retention and the paging channel. This attack is unique not only because it exploits vulnerable cellular services to target mobile devices but also because the victim mobile users are unaware when their batteries are being drained. Furthermore, we identify two key vulnerable components in cellular networks and propose mitigation strategies for protecting cellular devices from such attacks from the Internet.

Read the paper presented by Radmilo Racic ,University of California www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~hchen/paper/securecomm06.pdf