Nokia series 60 phones under attack

Nokia series 60 phones are under attack by a malformed e-mail message sent via SMS, which prevent the phones from sending SMS messages. Tobias Engel, a German security researcher dubbed the attack ‘curse of silence’ after demonstrating the attack at the Chaos communication Congress in Berlin recently.

CNET News reported that Engel gave details of the attack on the phones and said that after receiving the 32 character e-mail address, Nokia S60 2.6, 2.8, 3.0 and 3.1 devices are incapable of receiving SMS or MMS messages. He added that S60 2.6 and 3.0 phones lock up after one message, while 2.8 and 3.1 phones seize up after 11 messages.

Users that are affected by the ‘curse of silence’ should perform a factory reset of the handset to fix the issue. According to CNET News a Nokia representative said Nokia knows about the attack, but believes it does not pose as a major risk.

The representative said that the Nokia S60 3rd edition phones are not affected by the problem and that the matter can be prevented by network filtering. Apparently Engel informed Nokia and various other telecommunications operators about the issue in November.