iPhone Bug Allows SMS Spoofing

[wraggster]

The iPhone SMS app contains a quirky bug that could allow someone to send a user a text message that appears to come from any number that the sender specifies (https://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/researcher-finds-iphone-bug-allows-sms-spoofing-081712). The researcher who discovered the bug said it could be used by attackers to spoof messages from a bank or credit card company (http://pod2g-ios.blogspot.fr/2012/08/never-trust-sms-ios-text-spoofing.html) and send the victim to a target site controlled by the attacker. The issue lies in the way iOS implements a section of the SMS message called User Data Header, which has a number of options, one of which allows the user to change the phone number that the text message appears to come from. The advent of mobile banking apps, some of which use SMS messages for out-of-band authentication, makes this kind of attack vector perhaps more worrisome and useful for attackers than it would seem at first blush.

http://apple.slashdot.org/story/12/08/17/2057207/iphone-bug-allows-sms-spoofing