Windows Phone 8.1 Hacked

Do you wanna hack Nokia Lumia phone running the latest mobile operating system Windows 8.1 ? Hackers have made it very easy for you all!

Just few weeks after Microsoft announced a 19 year-old critical security hole existed in almost every version of its Windows operating system, XDA-developers have discovered a new vulnerability in Microsoft’s youngest OS Windows 8.1 that could easily be exploited by hackers to hack a Nokia Lumia phone.

XDA Developers hacker who go by the name DJAmol has found a wide open hole in OS Windows Phone 8.1 which makes the operating system very easy to hack. The vulnerability allows attackers to run their application with other user's privileges and edit the registry.

DJAmol realized that simply by replacing the contents of a trusted OEM app that has been transferred over to the SD card, the app will inherit the privileges of the original app. Once done, an attacker could then delete the existing directory and create a new directory with the same name as the original App.

As a result, the third party registry editor app will gain full access to the Info and Settings in the app itself. This how the hack can be implement in a few simple steps prescribed by XDA-developers in a blog post.

• Develop your own application package and deploy it on the target device.
• Install an any application such as “Glance Background Beta” from the Window Phone app Store.
• Delete all folders under the targeted directory of the installed app, in this case, Glance background.
• Now copy the contents of your own deployed package and paste it on the targeted directory. This implies replacing the “Program Files” of the installed app with your package files.
• Finally launch the App which will run in OEM (Glance Background beta) directory using the privileges of the targeted App.

The hack is very simple and easy to implement because all it need an application from the Window app store. But thankfully, the hack has not yet escalated to a full interop unlock, as the applications which are allowed to be moved to the SD card have limited access.

XDA developers forum reported the vulnerability to the Microsoft and also warned them that the vulnerability could give higher privileges to the attackers if tried using a First Party Application, rather a third party app. By the time, we can just wait for a response from Microsoft’s part to prevent it from getting more serious.

Researchers To Unleash New SMS Hacking Tool At Black Hat

iPhone-based auditing tool tests mobile phones for vulnerabilities to SMS-borne attacks

Texting just keeps getting riskier: Researchers at next month's Black Hat USA in Las Vegas will demonstrate newly discovered threats to mobile phone users, as well as release a new iPhone application that tests phones for security flaws.

"We set out to create a graphical SMS auditing app that runs on the iPhone," says Luis Miras, an independent security researcher. The tool can test any mobile phone, not just the iPhone, for vulnerabilities to specific exploits that use SMS as an attack vector.

The researchers say they are currently working with mobile phone vendors on the bugs they discovered in their research, and say they expect the vendors to patch the flaws before Black Hat.

"In all of the issues, we're working through with responsible disclosure -- working with all of the [affected] vendors," says Zane Lackey, senior security consultant with iSEC Partners. "[And] they are going to be resolved with patched [phones]."

SMS has evolved into more than just simple text messaging, helping to make it an attractive vehicle for attacks. For example, new features allow graphics, sound, and video to be sent via the protocol. And SMS is live by default, so it requires almost no user interaction to be attacked. Miras and Lackey say the weaknesses they will expose are in specific SMS implementations, however, and not the protocol itself.

SMS hacking has captured the attention of security researchers lately. In March, Tobias Engel demonstrated an exploit that lets an attacker crash SMS text inboxes on several Nokia mobile phone models. Called the "Curse of Silence" attack, the exploit uses a specially crafted SMS message to launch a denial-of-service (DoS) attack on the victim's phone. While the SMS/MMS messaging features go dark, the phone itself remains operational after the attack.

And with mobile phones increasingly storing more sensitive personal and business information, they will inevitably become a bigger target for attackers, Lackey says. "SMS is interesting -- it's an 'always-on' attack surface," he says, and can be used for a DoS or for executing malware on a victim's phone, for example.

Mobile phones are also even more difficult than laptops to manage and protect, leaving them wide open to compromise. Unlike a company-issued laptop, however, mobile phones are sometimes privately owned by users and are under little or no corporate control, Miras says. The best way for users to protect themselves from SMS-based attacks today, he says, is to keep their phones patched.

But, he says, patching has always been a challenge for mobile phones "because of the many people involved -- the OS vendor, the OEM, and the carriers, which all have different aspects of control in the process," Miras says. "It's a difficult job, and it's still maturing."

Meanwhile, Miras and Lackey haven't yet christened their new SMS hacking tool with a catchy name. They also are writing some other minor tools for SMS security: "We're still working on those, but the [graphical SMS auditing app] is our flagship tool," Lackey says.

'Curse of Silence' Hack Kills SMS Text Message Delivery

Text-message junkies beware: A new exploit demonstrated this week shows how an attacker can silently crash the SMS text message in-boxes of several models of Nokia mobile phones.

A specially formatted SMS message is used to wage a denial-of-service attack on the victim's phone. It targets vulnerability in versions 8 through 9.2 of the Symbian operating system and so far has been shown to affect the Nokia Series 60 phone versions 2.6, 2.8, 3.0, 3.1, and the Sony Ericsson UiQ.

Some phones immediately stop receiving text messages, while others lock up after receiving one or more of the messages.

So far, the documented affected phone models are as follows:

S60 3rd Edition, Feature Pack 1 (S60 3.1):
Nokia E90 Communicator
Nokia E71
Nokia E66
Nokia E51
Nokia N95 8GB
Nokia N95
Nokia N82
Nokia N81 8GB
Nokia N81
Nokia N76
Nokia 6290
Nokia 6124 classic
Nokia 6121 classic
Nokia 6120 classic
Nokia 6110 Navigator
Nokia 5700 XpressMusic

S60 3rd Edition, initial release (S60 3.0):
Nokia E70
Nokia E65
Nokia E62
Nokia E61i
Nokia E61
Nokia E60
Nokia E50
Nokia N93i
Nokia N93
Nokia N92
Nokia N91 8GB
Nokia N91
Nokia N80
Nokia N77
Nokia N73
Nokia N71
Nokia 5500
Nokia 3250

S60 2nd Edition, Feature Pack 3 (S60 2.8):
Nokia N90
Nokia N72
Nokia N70

S60 2nd Edition, Feature Pack 2 (S60 2.6):
Nokia 6682
Nokia 6681
Nokia 6680
Nokia 6630

For more details, you can read here or see the demonstration here.