[Cryptography] Bizarre behavior of a non-smart mobile phone

Michael Kjörling michael at kjorling.se
Fri May 12 03:47:25 EDT 2017


On 11 May 2017 23:45 +0200, from mok-kong.shen at t-online.de (mok-kong shen):
> Thus I surmise that software manipulation could be a likely cause.

To what end?

>From an attacker's perspective, what would be accomplished by causing
someone's phone to behave the way you describe? The only thing I can
think of that it _would_ accomplish would be to annoy random people
that you communicate with on at least a semi-regular basis (enough so
to store their phone numbers in your phone's address book). It also
does so in a way that is utterly trivial to trace back to you, _which
allows you to rectify the issue_ on way or another.

I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if membership or participation
on this list is a significant attention flag in some places. But I
also wouldn't be too quick to dismiss the old adage "don't explain by
malice that which can be adquately explained by incompetence". That,
and "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".

Buggy software running on the phone where you happen to hit some edge
case for whatever reason, or a physically or electrically faulty phone
(a loose solder joint, maybe?) sounds to me like a _far more plausible
explanation_ for what you are seeing, than software manipulation as a
targetted attack by an adversary. That doesn't mean that I summarily
dismiss even the possibility that it _could_ be the case, but it
definitely wouldn't be the first hypothesis I reach for to explain the
data you have presented.

That said, I honestly fail to see what this has to do with
cryptography.

-- 
Michael Kjörling • https://michael.kjorling.semichael at kjorling.se
                 “People who think they know everything really annoy
                 those of us who know we don’t.” (Bjarne Stroustrup)


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