Cellular phone networks at risk?

Hi! I took this from cnnmoney.com and even if it is not new, I would like to share this to those who are members of this phoneforums...


NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Cell phone networks in major American cities are vulnerable to being shut down by a flood of text messages from malicious hackers, according to a published report.
The New York Times reports on a study by two Pennsylvania State University professors, who said that cellular networks are open to the denial-of-service attacks in which computers send so many messages to a target that other machines are blocked from connecting.
Such attacks occur regularly online, and the professors, Patrick McDaniel and Thomas La Porta, said that a hacker with a single computer with a cable modem could succeed in shutting down networks by pushing 165 text messages a second into a network.
Cellular companies told the newspaper that while such attacks are possible, they have developed systems to prevent such efforts from shutting down their networks.




any comment?

what can be said . .I have read these typo news many times ..

Meh, I see no threat to the phone networks. They are so big, they will find a way to overcome this situation soon, and probably without much hassle as well.

I'm pretty sure that it is not a threat, just few occurrences.

Slight risk for the phone companies, really. I see no harm to happen to any phone company soon. As was said earlier, I have to agree that this will be resolved very easily, and fast.

Think of it this way: it's like people doing many searches into Google or Yahoo, hoping to crash their servers. It just isn't going to work. Not efficient enough.

This is true.

It can happen. I am into this industry and I have seen the software systems and it is very much possible. It does not happen because carriers put restrictions on hardware levels such that these huge amount of messages don't reach at the same time.

Well, let us just hope for the best. For sure, the network providers are also doing their best to maintain their efficient service afterall, this is business, right?

This is scare mongering at its finest. If this were true and there were no way to prevent such attacks, you would think that every major website in the world would be shut down 24x7. The reality is there are many ways to prevent and avoid these kinds of DOS attacks.

The cell companies have more then enough resources to protect their networks from these kinds of attacks. Up until now it was not an issue so they did not bother.

I have read a few things about that before but I do not think anything is going to happen but if it does that is going to stink really bad.