ACCORDING TO A REPORT authored by two Penn State University professors, Patrick McDaniel and Thomas F. La Porta, malicious SMS text message campaigns could congest cellular message and voice networks across entire cities.
Because SMS text can be generated from email and the Internet, cellular networks are vulnerable to heavy spam-like traffic that could compromise voice communications across entire networks.
“By pushing 165 messages a second into the network,â€? said Patrick D. McDaniel, a professor of computer science and engineering at Pennsylvania State University and the lead researcher on the paper, “you can congest all of Manhattan.” From: NY Times (you may need to register to access the full article)
The findings of the report are expected to be released today at Penn State, and as a formal research paper at a computer security conference next month. The paper will be posted online at: An Analysis of Vulnerabilities in SMS-Capable Cellular Networks
