Proof of concept published for Android ‘SMS of Death’ flaw

The researcher behind “SMS of Death” has published a proof-of-concept Android app and source code for a malformed text message that he says can crash a phone’s calling service without the recipient doing anything. Lawrence Abrams of BleepingComputer also reported the release. The researcher says the crash drops an active call, including a call to emergency services. The data SMS does not appear in the inbox.

The message uses WAP Push, a type of data SMS. In the researcher’s account, Android processes a header length as a negative number, triggering an exception that crashes the calling service. He reports reproducing the crash on Android 12 through 16, including tested Pixel and Samsung devices. Those tests do not establish that every Android phone is susceptible.

Repeated messages can make recovery harder. The researcher says roughly 20 messages can leave a device unusable for an extended period. His write-up describes an Android 12 reboot loop in which a queued malformed message is retried when the phone starts. It also describes a way to clear the message using a computer and Android Debug Bridge, or ADB, without a factory reset.