SMS spoofing

Posted on | June 22, 2005 |

Story on SMS Spoofing by The Hindu. Faking sender’s number in SMS is easy using some software front-end and the bulk SMS providers as the carriers.
For the bulk SMS providers, one way to control this menace and not get involved in the legal tangles is to authenticate their customer’s “sender” mobile number. This can be done by sending a one-time security code to the customer’s mobile during the registeration process. Customer completes his registration by providing that security code in the registration form finally. This ensures that the “sender” mobile number exists and belongs to the customer.

A Bharath Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) engineer said that mobile telephone users could easily find out if they have received a fake SMS by going to message options menu and checking the SMS message details. The details include the mobile phone number of the message sender and the message centre number of the cellular service provider. “If it is a fake message purportedly from a BSNL number, the message centre number would not be that of the BSNL service. It would be that of the SMS gateway hired by the company that offers the web-based spoofing service.”

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