Fortinet Provides Protection Against "Curse of Silence/CurseSMS" Mobile Attack

Fortinet's FortiCleanUp Tool for Curse of Silence/CurseSMS Enables Recovery After SMS/MMS Denial of Service Attack

Fortinet® -- the pioneer and leading provider of unified threat management (UTM) solutions -- today announced that its FortiGuard® Global Security Research Team has released a new version of the FortiCleanUp tool to help users recover from the recently discovered "Curse of Silence" mobile attack (also known as CurseSMS). Fortinet's FortiCleanUp is a range of free tools running on Symbian(TM)OS S60-powered phones and designed to remove and recover from specific mobile malware and their related variants.

The "Curse of Silence/CurseSMS" attack is a remote SMS/MMS denial of service that was recently discovered by Tobias Engel and revealed at the 25th Chaos Communication Congress. The attack involves sending a maliciously crafted SMS to potential targets. Upon receipt of that SMS, the targeted device may no longer be able to receive SMS or MMS messages. Depending on the operating system version of the targeted mobile phone, the device may require a factory reset to properly function again.

Fortinet provides a free-of-charge license to its new FortiCleanUp tool, which helps users to recover once their mobile phone has been attacked by "Curse of Silence/CurseSMS." The FortiCleanUp tool for Curse of Silence/CurseSMS automatically scans and removes malicious SMS/MMS messages that are preventing the proper functioning of the handset.

Potentially vulnerable devices include Nokia phones running SymbianOS S60 2nd Edition Feature Pack 2, 2nd Edition Feature Pack 3, 3rd Edition, and 3rd Edition Feature Pack 1. This includes several phones of the "N" series up to the N95 and of the "E" series up to the E90, as well as older models such as the 6680.

For complete real-time protection, the FortiGuard team recommends the installation of Fortinet's FortiClient Mobile on mobile devices. This security application provides unified security agent features including personal firewall, IPSec VPN, antivirus, antispyware and SMS anti-spam. FortiClient's protection agent is powered by FortiGuard security subscription services to help protect devices against today's blended threats. FortiClient Mobile provides light-weight, unified security agent features and is available for Microsoft® Windows Mobile(TM) and SymbianOS S60 operating systems.

For additional information on this advisory or to get the complete list of Nokia phones targeted by the "Curse of Silence/CurseSMS" attack, please go to: http://www.fortiguardcenter.com/advisory/FGA-2008-31.html.

For ongoing threat research, bookmark the FortiGuard Center (http://www.fortiguardcenter.com/) or add it to your RSS feed by going to http://www.fortinet.com/FortiGuardCenter/rss/index.html. To learn more about FortiGuard Subscription Services, visit http://www.fortinet.com/products/fortiguard.html.

About Fortinet (www.fortinet.com)

Fortinet is the pioneer and leading provider of ASIC-accelerated unified threat management, or UTM, security systems, which are used by enterprises and service providers to increase their security while reducing total operating costs. Fortinet solutions were built from the ground up to integrate multiple levels of security protection -- including firewall, antivirus, intrusion prevention, VPN, spyware prevention and antispam -- designed to help customers protect against network and content level threats. Leveraging a custom ASIC and unified interface, Fortinet solutions offer advanced security functionality that scales from remote office to chassis-based solutions with integrated management and reporting. Fortinet solutions have won multiple awards around the world and are the only security products that are certified in six programs by ICSA Labs: Firewall, Antivirus, IPSec VPN, SSL VPN, Network IPS, and Antispam. Fortinet is privately held and based in Sunnyvale, California.

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