Cell Number Spoofing

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Onraji

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A colleague of mine just received an sms from "himself" that he swears blind he does not send. Is cell number spoofing possible?
 
"good dayplease note that accounts will not be available to day from 12:00 make sure your order is received with payments before 12:00logistics finance"

and the typos are like that in the sms ... :/

EDIT: the spacing typos..
 
A friend of mine was also talking about an sms.
I hope its not the same friend.
 
some sms gateways let you specify the "from" details. initially it was free-for-all, then they emposed strict measures requiring you to submit a request with a list of from numbers along with special company details etc. And finally you had to acknowledge a request sent to the possible from numbers.

Maybe some places in the world arent as strict though and are allowing them to send sms with a custom from no without proper checks in place.
 
You used to be able "spoof" a SMS through services like BulkSMS by changing the sender id, but the SPs put a stop to that a long time ago because of abuse. Perhaps this is still possible from overseas services.
 
rurapente said:
some sms gateways let you specify the "from" details. initially it was free-for-all, then they emposed strict measures requiring you to submit a request with a list of from numbers along with special company details etc. And finally you had to acknowledge a request sent to the possible from numbers.

Maybe some places in the world arent as strict though and are allowing them to send sms with a custom from no without proper checks in place.
Click to expand...

Eheh... beat be to it ;)
 
rurapente said:
some sms gateways let you specify the "from" details. initially it was free-for-all, then they emposed strict measures requiring you to submit a request with a list of from numbers along with special company details etc. And finally you had to acknowledge a request sent to the possible from numbers.

Maybe some places in the world arent as strict though and are allowing them to send sms with a custom from no without proper checks in place.
Click to expand...

South African networks do not allow you to manipulate the sender from number at all.

But there are many international bulk sms carriers that make use of networks (mostly German) to do this. I've received such a message before where the sender from was set to my handset number.

If you are on Vodacom you will unlikely get such messages as they have blocked them - CC & MTN still allow them.
 
Looks like somebody at MTN is selling our cel no. both myself and partner got the same sms.
 
Will google the name and hope they have a site then......... they die.
 
Actually...there is a way to spoof numbers with most nokia phones,I won't go into detail but when I say it's very easy I mean it's very easy...a monkey could do it with a few clicks on his phone ( or keypresses )

*Edit - Reason I know is I used it to bunk school once,spoofed my parent's cell nr and sent an sms to myself about an emergency - school checked the number and off I went ;) Ah the good old days
 
Onraji said:
A colleague of mine just received an sms from "himself" that he swears blind he does not send. Is cell number spoofing possible?
Click to expand...

Yes it is. A few years back I worked for a company who had direct links to MTN and Vadacom's SMSCs.

We dev'd our own software to hook up to the SMSC and were able spoof our own cell numbers when sending via the software, thereby sending someone in the office an sms as if from another's cellphone. The software required a senders number, in the same way you'd set the 'from' address, in code, when sending email via smtp.

Admittedly we stumbled upon this when one of our unit tests had an incorrect cell number defined.

This was a good few years ago before smsing became popular. I'm sure the networks would have tightened up and blocked this now, especially since sms's have now become a security feature for many businesses.
 
Chavez said:
Yes it is. A few years back I worked for a company who had direct links to MTN and Vadacom's SMSCs.

We dev'd our own software to hook up to the SMSC and were able spoof our own cell numbers when sending via the software, thereby sending someone in the office an sms as if from another's cellphone. The software required a senders number, in the same way you'd set the 'from' address, in code, when sending email via smtp.

Admittedly we stumbled upon this when one of our unit tests had an incorrect cell number defined.

This was a good few years ago before smsing became popular. I'm sure the networks would have tightened up and blocked this now, especially since sms's have now become a security feature for many businesses.
Click to expand...

Correct, but like cbrunsdonza pointed out the local networks are blocking it [in most cases] when it originates from within their networks. Vodacom for one still actively use it internally and when you call their directory services for example.

That said, it's still as simple as your example and not as simple as your example. Just depends on who your provider is and how their connectivity is set up.
 
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