Microsoft says its looking into looking into reports of a potential bug in its Windows Phone that causes disabling of the device through a text message. The glitch, first reported by blog WinRumors, is activated when Windows Phone users gets a SMS with specific text. The glitch causes rebooting of the phone and goes on to disable the texting app.
According to reports, Khaled Salameh, the guy who first spotted the flaw, had provided the text to WinRumors, which is said to have tested the bug with other Windows Phones including HTC Titan and Samsung Focus Flash. WinRumors has also posted a video demo, showcasing how the text message reboots the device. “The attack is not device specific and appears to be an issue with the way the Windows Phone messaging hub handles messages,” writes Tom Warren of WinRumours. Meanwhile, Microsoft has released a statement, saying it is probing the reported Windows Phone messaging issue.
It’s learnt that the glitch can be triggered through message from Facebook chat or Windows Live Messenger. WinRumors further says that if a Windows Phone user has pinned a friend as live tile, and that friend posts the specific text on Facebook, the phone will be locked. However, this can be deactivated at boot if there “a small amount of time to get past the lock screen and into the home screen to remove the pinned live tile before it flips over and locks the device,” Warren writes.
In past, Apple iPhones have also suffered from such SMS glitches, where attacker could control the iPhone. Recently, Apple rolled out iOS 5.0.1 update to fix the battery issues in the iPhone 4S. Galaxy Nexus is also reported to have suffered from a hardware bug that forces the phone to automatically change the volume.
Meanwhile, check out the video posted by WinRumors:
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