Black Hatters Reveil SMS Security Concern

Speaking to the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas, Charlie Miller and Collin Mulliner told the audience that smartphones operating Apple's, Microsoft's, or Google's operating systems were vulnerable to an SMS based attack that would be executed by code arriving in a text message. The malicious code could knock a phone off of a network, access data on the phone, or access the programs installed on the phone. The pair have published their findings to encourage the OS makers to fix the holes and have said the they contacted Apple, Microsoft, and Google directly but Google is the only one who has addressed the issue todate.

BBC story.

Canadians Can Twitter Via Cell Phone... For A Price

Since November Canadians have not been able to receive tweets from Twitter on their cell phones via SMS as Twitter cut the service citing prohibitive costs. Yesterday however Bell announced that it would now allow the SMS tweets but there is a cost. "Because Twitter is a third party service, the messages are considered premium and not covered by our plans. This aligns with industry standards regarding third party premium messaging," said Bell spokeswoman Julie Smithers. Bell will charge users of the service 15 cents for each incoming or outgoing tweet, even if the user has an unlimited texting plan.

Source: CBC