{"id":452,"date":"2005-10-05T17:58:59","date_gmt":"2005-10-05T17:58:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/archives\/452"},"modified":"2005-10-05T17:58:59","modified_gmt":"2005-10-05T17:58:59","slug":"potential-dos-attack-on-cell-networks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/archives\/452","title":{"rendered":"Potential DOS attack on cell networks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Researchers at Pennsylvania State University have determined that it’s possible to launch an effective denial of service attack on cellphone networks, either in a localized area or nationwide, by flooding known cellphones in the area with SMS messages (see summary<\/a>, paper<\/a> and NYTimes article<\/a>). The attack relies on using web and Internet-based SMS portals to overwhelm the wireless data-band, which is also used for connecting voice calls. Since only messages that are actually delivered over-the-air contribute to the network congestion, attackers would first need to generating a “hit-list” of known-valid cellphones (for example, by scraping websites for cellphone numbers in a given prefix and then slowly testing those for SMS capability before starting the attack).<\/p>\n

One snippit from the paper I found interesting was how different cellphone providers deal with a backup of SMS messages awaiting delivery to a single user (e.g. when the cellphone is turned off): AT&T buffered all 400 test SMS messages, Verizon only kept the last 100 messages sent (FIFO eviction), and Sprint only kept the first 30 (LIFO eviction).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Researchers at Pennsylvania State University have determined that it’s possible to launch an effective denial of service attack on cellphone networks, either in a localized area or nationwide, by flooding known cellphones in the area with SMS messages (see summary<\/a>, paper<\/a> and NYTimes article<\/a>). The attack relies on using web and Internet-based SMS portals to overwhelm the wireless data-band, which is also used for connecting voice calls. Since only messages that are actually delivered over-the-air contribute to the network congestion, attackers would first need to generating a “hit-list” of known-valid cellphones (for example, by scraping websites for cellphone numbers in a given prefix and then slowly testing those for SMS capability before starting the attack).<\/p>\n

One snippit from the paper I found interesting was how different cellphone providers deal with a backup of SMS messages awaiting delivery to a single user (e.g. when the cellphone is turned off): AT&T buffered all 400 test SMS messages, Verizon only kept the last 100 messages sent (FIFO eviction), and Sprint only kept the first 30 (LIFO eviction).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=452"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.docbug.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}