As news of a dangerous hacking campaign has emerged, which enabled the attacker to send malicious SMS messages to nearby Android smartphones without even knowing the phone numbers, Google has a warning for all 3 billion Android users: change this setting now.
The SMS Blaster Android Threat
We all know that links in SMS messages are bad, m’kay. Heck, even the FBI has been warning smartphone users not to click on the things recently. But here’s something you probably were not aware of: hackers can send these messages without knowing your smartphone number. How so, do I hear you screaming at the screen? Using something called an SMS Blaster is the answer.
As I reported Jun 26, an SMS Blaster enables a threat actor to have, in effect, an illegal cellphone mast in the boot of their car. This fools nearby smartphones into connecting to it by having a stronger, albeit only 2G, signal than the legitimate cellphone mast used by the network provider.
These are part of a threat known as Stingray attacks, all of which utilize insecure and dangerous rogue cell mast approaches to hack your Android smartphone. Although the chances of being caught in an SMS Blaster or Stingray attack are slim, do you really want to take the risk?
Mitigate The SMS Blaster Threat By Changing This Android Setting
The good news, other than the latest threat actor found to be using an SMS Blaster was arrested in London and has just been sentenced to a year in prison, is that there’s an easy way to stop these attacks.
“Android 12 introduced a user option to disable 2G at the modem level, a feature first adopted by Pixel,” Google’s Android security and privacy team said. “This option, if used, completely mitigates the risk from SMS Blasters.”
Android 16 will introduce new defenses as well, including something called 2G Network Protection that will prevent the Android device from connecting to older networks. This is part of a protection package called, aptly enough, mobile network security. This includes notifications when the Android device connects to an unencrypted network, which takes the user to the Safety Center for more information. This detection of potentially dangerous cellphone masts will be another weapon in the Android user armoury to fight the SMS Blaster threat.
