Crash a phone by SMS?

A corrupted SMS could crash your Nokia phone and shut you off from it.

This was the claim made by Job de Haas, a security researcher with Information Technology Security Experts (ITSX). The Dutchman demonstrated the potential problem at a conference in November, where he reportedly crashed a Nokia 6210.

According to him, Nokia 3310 and 3330 phones are also vulnerable, although a Siemens phone he tested was said to be safe.

de Haas accomplished this by adapting a program called sms_client, and using it to corrupt the User Data Header of an SMS. The message was then delivered from an Internet-connected PC.

Once the malformed message was received, the phone crashed and could not be switched on again due to a software fault, claimed de Haas.

The reported solution was to remove the SMS message, either by using a desktop SMS management program, or slot the SIM card into a non-susceptible phone and deleting the corrupted text from there.

When contacted, a Nokia Singapore spokesperson acknowledged the problem, saying that de Haas had informed the Finnish phone maker before going public with the information.

"Mr de Haas works in the Internet security business, and his company's policy is to publish all potential flaws in security. We are grateful that he has turned to us on this issue first..," said Nokia in a global statement. "We wish to assure our customers that the actual likelihood of receiving such a message is extremely small, and has so far only been produced under controlled laboratory conditions."

Software upgrades will not be available for existing handsets, as it is "extremely unlikely" for this particular crash scenario to occur in the real world, said the spokesperson.

Still, Nokia's newly manufactured phones will come with modified software, supposedly removing the risk altogether, she added.

According to UK site The Register, de Haas disagreed with Nokia's assessment of the risk. "Once you figure it out it is quite trivial and there are plenty of people with the knowledge to pull it off," he was reported as saying.

Users with concerns and questions about this issue can visit any of Nokia's Care Centres where technicians will be on hand for advice, said the spokesperson.