Curse of Silence or a Fabulous Feature?
by Ms. Jen
The Mobile Blog-o-sphere is all a-flutter about the *supposedly* evil 'Curse of Silence' vulnerability in some Nokia S60 phones.
If you haven't heard of it, a supposed malicious person or machine could send a bit of code that would stop all SMS/texts and MMSs from ever arriving to your cell phone. The only fix is doing a hard factory reset to the phone.
And this is a bad thing? Frankly, I think Nokia should offer The Curse (or Blessing) of Silence as a toggle on / toggle off feature!
I *hate*hate*hate* texts. Have I mentioned how much I hate texts/SMSs? If any saintly hacker out there would like to pass on the Blessing of Silence to me, I would bake you the cookies or a full dinner of your choice...
Then I could happily say to all the SMS-addicted folks I know, "No, really, I mean, REALLY, I did NOT receive your text message. I am so sorry. Why didn't you call?"
This bit of contrary black humor is brought to you by Ms. Jen.
Ehhh, there are some applications for your Symbian S60 3rd that allow to block and filter the receiving of SMS. SMS is pretty wonderful when people send data, like appointments, phonenumbers and more. It's however no comparison to hearing someone's voice or getting a hug.
But I hate IM significantly more than SMS. Orders of magnitude more.
Posted by: dirk snoyt | January 08, 2009 at 11:10 AM
No problem, Jen. Just give me your phone number and I'll bless you with the curse of silence.
;)
Posted by: Symbian Underground | January 08, 2009 at 01:39 PM
I wouldn't mind it myself, as long a I could reset when ready : )
Posted by: willh | January 22, 2009 at 05:28 PM
I have this code - It can seriously mess up phones that aren't meant to be used with that code, in which greater problems happen. For example, your phone will drain the battery everytime its charged, and it does it by the battery serial number. You'd have to buy a new battery in order for it to work properly again: after doing the full restart to the phone aswell.
I tracked the person who sent me this text message. After multiple attempts to contact people from symbian, I have not received any response. So if its not real then I'm considering releasing the serial code as an open source research information.
[email protected]
Posted by: Anon | January 24, 2009 at 02:13 PM
Hi Anon,
The above was meant as a playful joke, I really don't want a security hack for my phone but I would love to have a legal feature that would allow me to turn off sms/texts if I so choose.
smiles, jen ;o)
Posted by: Ms. Jen | January 27, 2009 at 02:59 AM