A dangerous security vulnerability has been identified in the world of smartphones, putting millions of mobile device users at risk. This new vulnerability, named SMS Of Death, leads to the complete failure of Android-based smartphones.
The unusual problem was initially discovered by security researcher Mark Blazsik, who subsequently named it SMS Of Death. According to the researcher, activating this attack requires a special SMS message that causes a crash in the Android system, after which the smartphone stops functioning.
The smartphone's call management system completely fails, which can lead to the inability to make any calls, including emergency calls. The researcher warns that about twenty such dangerous messages can turn any Android smartphone into a useless object.
Thanks to SMS Of Death, the smartphone can enter a bootloop state, where the Android operating system continuously tries to process the SMS but cannot start normally.
Another serious issue with SMS of Death is that it is extremely difficult to detect. Since the message does not appear in incoming SMS, the system instantly freezes when attempting to process it, and users receive no notifications.
Even resetting to factory settings does not solve the problem. If the message was sent from a specific number, the telecommunications operator will continue to attempt delivery, and the phone will fail again every time it is turned on.
However, according to media reports citing the researcher, it may be possible to fix this problem by connecting the phone to a computer where these messages can be viewed and deleted, although this method may seem complicated to many users.
Mark Blazsik reported that he first notified Google about this vulnerability on May 5th. He noted that Google repeatedly refused to treat his report as a security issue. Later, the researcher learned that Google had been working on fixing this problem for some time.
