Windows Phone exploit crashes devices, disables messaging

“Microsoft’s range of Windows Phone devices suffer from a denial-of-service attack that allows attackers to disable the messaging functionality on a device,” Tom Warren reports for WinRumors.

“The flaw works simply by sending an SMS to a Windows Phone user. Windows Phone 7.5 devices will reboot and the messaging hub will not open despite repeat attempts,” Warren reports. “The attack is not device specific and appears to be an issue with the way the Windows Phone messaging hub handles messages. The bug is also triggered if a user sends a Facebook chat message or Windows Live Messenger message to a recipient.”

Warren reports, “The flaw appears to affect other aspects of the Windows Phone operating system too. If a user has pinned a friend as a live tile on their device and the friend posts a particular message on Facebook then the live tile will update and causes the device to lock up.”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: Par for the course.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dan K.” for the heads up.]

28 Comments

  1. For a little while there, I thought that Microsoft, having essentially scrapped the entire WinMobile 6.5 ecosystem, delivered in Win7mob something original, new and essentially reasonably robust and reliable (they surely took their sweet time getting there). It may be new, it is likely quite original (no iPhone copying here, at least), but reliable and robust it is exactly as their desktop OS…

    1. RE: “reliable and robust it is exactly as their desktop OS”

      When someone buys a Windows product, they have expectations that must be fulfilled. Microsoft is simply giving it’s fans what they’ve come to expect.

    2. Microsoft has never, not once in its entire existence, been able to program its way out of a paper bag.

      That’s why ditching an existing codebase and starting over from scratch fails to help them in the reliability, robustness, and security departments. Seriously, this shouldn’t come as a surprise.

    1. That’s what I want to know. I know someone at Microsoft in the WinPhone dept that is always trying to push their Win Phone ’07 on me (he even had to put a Windows sticker on the back of his phone to help marketing) and I would just LOVE to crash his phone with one of these messages.

  2. You know, I agree; however, i am finally letting MS in my home this Christmas. I have bought an XBox 360 for my son. The reason, Microsoft lowered their flags in honor of Steve Jobs globally when he passed.

    I didn’t hear of Giigle doing anything like this.

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