Cellphone Security?
Cellphone security is something that I'm not very knowledgeable about, but there are some folks who know a lot about it. Read this article for information on how easily someone can reprogram your phone to make it call them every-time it gets a call, and you'll never know.
http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/7216/127/
I would say that the attacker could take it a step further and have the 800 # called go to a voicemail service that simply logs every call. Suddenly, there are audio file transcripts of every call you've made. Send this through a voice to text filter and they've got an easily searchable transcript of every call you've made. SCARY!
It seems the system SMS process is broken and needs a layer of authentication and phone user approval to prevent this exploit.
Comments
I'm definitely not negating that the system SMS needs better security and authentication - that definitely needs to happen. But except for really important people, I honestly don't think the average cell phone user has much to worry about. Though, perhaps this also tells us that important phone calls shouldn't take place on cell phones... technology can always be hacked; nothing is positively secure.
I think you're right. The average user really doesn't have much to worry about today. The exploit seems to require a degree of knowledge of the phone systems that it will only be used for high level surveillance and industrial espionage. Of course, it's possible that the script kiddies will get their hands on this and make it readily available for anyone.
Your point that important calls shouldn't take place on cell phones is dead one. While this SMS exploit is a new approach, there are other ways of intercepting calls that are equally compromising.