Receive Text Messages On Pc

BEWARE: Others Can Unlock Your Cars Using Cell Phone, Laptop

We've seen hackers breach the Web sites of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Rupert Murdoch's New Corp., among many other firms.  Now seeing the cars of these people being hacked may no longer be a remote possibility: two security researches have found a way to hack into mobile apps used for unlocking car doors and starting their engines.

The hackers, Don Bailey and Mathew Solnik, will deliver their findings next week at the Black Hat USA conference.

"Today, A-GPS tracking devices, 3G Security Cameras, Urban Traffic Control systems, SCADA sensors, Home Control and Automation systems, and even vehicles are now telephony enabled.  These systems often receive control messages over the telephone network in the form of text messages (SMS) or GPRS data.  These messages can trigger actions such as firmware updates, Are You There requests, or even solicitations for data.  As a result, it is imperative for mobile researchers to understand how these systems can be detected by attackers on the global telephone network, then potentially abused," Bailey said in a synopsis to a briefing entitled "War Texting: Identifying and Interacting with Devices on the Telephone Network," at the conference.

Although the hackers did not reveal the types of cars they hacked, BMW Assist, GM OnStar, Ford Sync, and Hyundai Blue Link are known to use remote control and telemetry systems, according to reporting by The Hacker News.  When a user pushes the buttons on the app mobile app, a signal is sent to a service center, which then sends a signal to the car.

Bailey and Solnik, employees of security consulting firm iSEC Partners, have figured these protocols and were able to duplicate the signals remotely sent to the cars.  "With a clever bit of reverse engineering, the hackers were able to pose as these servers and communicate directly with a car's on-board computer via 'war texting' - a riff on 'war driving,' the act of finding open wireless networks," The Hacker News said.

Bailey and Solnik, employees of security consulting firm iSEC Partners, have vowed not to reveal their exact method and the two car brands that they hacked until the automakers have time to fix the security hole, according to CNET.

"But to be honest it doesn't really matter: if two systems have been cracked (and in just a few hours no less), then it's likely that other on-board, remote control systems are also vulnerable to the same attack vector," The Hacker News points out.

The Code4Lib Journal – How to Provide Live Library Information via ...

Paul Smith’s College provides library hours and workstation availability using SMS Text Messages. The service was implemented using an easy and affordable web-based API for SMS sending and receiving, from twilio.com. A new class of ‘cloud-based‘ SMS vendors make simple SMS-based services efficient and cost-effective to implement, and have many possible applications in the library environment. A simple PHP example is provided which supplies workstation availability over SMS based on a database of computer availability from a previous Code4Lib Journal Article.

by Mike Beccaria

Paul Smith’s College is a very small (~1,000 FTE) 4-year private college nestled in the Adirondack Park in northern New York. This past year we were fortunate to have record breaking enrollment numbers, but with the added number of students there was added demand. Subjectively, the library staff observed that computers were being used a lot more often and in greater numbers than previous years. Small surveys and feedback gave indications that students were having trouble finding computers at peak usage times and our usage data largely confirmed these findings.

To start to tackle this problem during this budget cycle, we developed a live computer availability map on our website using Kim Griggs’ Code4lib article “How to Build a Computer Availability Map” as a template ( Griggs, 2010 ) with long term plans to add a few more computer terminals to the library, as well as an information kiosk with the computer availability map on it. We decided to supplement the computer availability map with a text messaging service that would allow students to receive computer availability information on their mobile devices.

SMS, or Simple Message Service, is the means by which common text messages are sent via mobile devices. For our text message solution, we decided to use a 3rd party provider that bridges the gap between web services and telecom. We had several choices. Twilio, Tropo, and SMSified, as well as others who provide cloud-based web service API’s that enable users to build applications to leverage voice and SMS communications. These companies specifically provide customers with a phone number and a web based API that allows developers to control telecommunication programmatically. For example, using these services makes it possible to create an automated text reply service so that if someone sends a text message or phone call to a phone number that I lease from Twilio (the provider we used), I can programmatically reply to the text with customized information.

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