[ISN] 'War Texting' Attack Hacks Car Alarm System

http://www.darkreading.com/security/news/231002602/war-texting-attack-hacks-car-alarm-system.html

By Kelly Jackson Higgins
Dark Reading
July 25, 2011

It took researcher Don Bailey a mere two hours to successfully hack into 
a popular car alarm system and start the car remotely by sending it a 
message.

Bailey, a security consultant with iSec Partners, next week at Black Hat 
USA in Las Vegas plans to show a video of the car alarm attack he and 
fellow researcher Mat Solnik conducted. His Black Hat presentation is 
called "War Texting: Identifying and Interacting with Devices on the 
Telephone Network."

Physical security systems attached to the GSM and cellular networks such 
as GPS tracking devices and car alarms, as well as traffic control 
systems, home control and automation systems, and SCADA sensors, are 
ripe for attack, according to Bailey.

War texting is something that Bailey demonstrated earlier this year with 
personal GPS locators. He demonstrated how to hack vendor Zoombak's 
personal GPS devices to find, target, and impersonate the user or 
equipment rigged with those consumer-focused devices. Those low-cost 
embedded tracking devices in your smartphone or those personal GPS 
devices that track the whereabouts of your children, car, pet, or 
shipment can easily be intercepted by hackers, who can then pinpoint 
their whereabouts, impersonate them, and spoof their physical location, 
he says.

[...]


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