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Nokia 1100 Banking Hack Replicated by Investigators

About a month ago we reported that certain Nokia 1100 handsets, one of the company’s most basic handsets that was seemingly designed for emerging markets, was hacked by criminals to steal bank account passwords and other such valuable data. The reason authorities picked up on the system was because of the sudden rise in cost of the handset among the criminal underworld. We had also mentioned that investigations were on going at the time to try and figure out how this was being done.

A small hack in the handset’s programming would allow criminals to use someone else's phone number and receive their SMS. Thus, in certain countries where banks would send a one-time password called an mTAN (mobile Transaction Authentication Number) to a person's phone in order to allow the transfer of money to another account etc. the hacked cell phone users would gain access to accounts. The company in charge of the investigation, Ultrascan, managed to acquire a handset from the specified factory with specified firmware for testing and successfully reprogrammed the device to do exactly what the criminal would have it do.
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