Spoofing SMS
Not a lot of people know how to do this so I'll share.

A couple of years ago I was involved in a start-up company (alright, I owned the bugger) that was involved in writing a system that would let you send SMS text messages from Outlook to anyone in your contacts list. As a by-product of this work I discovered how to spoof the sender ID of the messages I was sending.

Now think of the implications of this. I could put *anything* I liked in the sender ID as long as it was under 12 characters. I could put numbers, text or a mix of them. I had some fun sending messages from GOD, 02 Admin, Orange etc to various people telling them that I'd cancelled their accounts as they'd been stalking people, sending porn etc, etc. Harmless fun. But then I got creative.

Using my brother as my first dupe I sent him a text message and spoofed the sender ID to come from his son Barry's mobile number. The beauty of this system is that whatever name my brother had stored his son's name as, that would pop up on his phone - in this case Number 1 Son. So I composed this.

"Dad.I can't tell you this to your face but I'm gay. And my arse doesn't half hurt."

And pressed the transmit button. Just at that split second I remembered that my brother had had a mild heart attack the previous month. Bugger! Spent the next few minutes frantically ringing him,getting an engaged tone and then re-dialling. I had these visions of him lying dead on the floor of his office, clutching his chest with one hand and his mobile with the other while that message scrolled across the screen pointing to my guilt.

Eventually I got through to him and explained that it was me that had spoofed the message. Turned out he had been sitting in the bog at work telling his wife that their beloved eldest son was batting for the other side. He was so relived that he promised to kill me quickly when we next met.

I remain,as usual,
( Legless Mister Stabby - shanks for the memory, Thu 26 May 2005, 12:09, Reply)