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

[mok-kong shen]

Am 12.05.2017 um 09:47 schrieb Michael Kjörling:
> 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.
>
As the line quoting me says, it is merely my conjecture that software 
manipulation
could be a likely cause. In matters yet not definitely known, persons 
with different
psychology, past life experience, actual personal situations, knowlege, 
etc. etc. could
very naturally have widely different conjectures. Even  in math, 
mathematians may
have different opinoins concerning whether certain long-time unresolved 
conjectures
are indeed true and scientific, really objective, debates between those 
with one opinion
and those with the other are by nature impossible. So I have 
unfortunately to say
that I can't write any sensible sentences to counter what you wrote, 
while on the other
hand I tend to remain with my own conjecture.

The issue is of course outside the domain  of theories of cryptography. 
It's one of IT
security which I personally deem to encompass cryptography. Since I 
guess that
a part of participants of our community are also experts in IT security, 
I took the
liberty to post my  OP and sincerely apologize herewith to those readers 
to whom
my OP was a disturbance.

M. K. Shen