The Curse Of Silence For Nokia Sets

Security researchers have made public an exploit that can stop Nokia handsets from sending or receiving text messages — the so-called Curse of Silence.

They’re calling it the Curse of Silence, an exploit for the Nokia N60 that can prevent the handset from sending or receiving text messages, and it’s been made public by F-Secure. Although the texting capabilities of the handset can be halted, all the phone’s other functions remain intact. The exploit was made public on Monday at the Chaos Communication Congress, according to InformationWeek.

Those wanting to initiate an attack can format a mail to be sent as an SMS message, then set the Protocol Identifier on the message to "Internet Electronic Mail." Some S60 devices won’t be able to receive more SMS or MMS messages if the initial message has more than 32 characters, and it’s possible for a single message to damage the targeted device, according to F-Secure.

In a statement, Samu Konttinen, VP of F-Secure’s mobile business unit, said:

"Performing the attack does not require technical expertise, and due to this, there is a risk of it becoming a nuisance. We have already provided a security update to this threat to our F-Secure Mobile Security customers."

Affected phones had to have factory settings reset to restore texting capabilities.