Text Message Hijacking

[ryanS]

Hi everyone,
I really hope this thread hasn't died because its 1:40 AM here on the east coast and im freaking out. This exact same thing happened to me. My girlfriend sent me a text that said some sentimental stuff and the text message that she typed originally ended with "You can always tell me whats on your mind, I will never judge you and i will always love you" but when i received the text it said this "you can always tell me whats on your mple always get sick of each other".
The text was truncated in the middle of the word mind and someone attempted to change the last sentence to "people always get sick of each other". Interesting the message was changed around the 160 character mark at 153 characters so it looks like some of the message was lost and the second page of the message was hijacked and changed. While i don't have a Motorola droid i do use Android. I have a Nexus one running on the AT&T network. I cant find very much evidence of this on the internet. If i had to guess i would say its probably the Chinese government declaring war on Google haha. But in all seriousness I'm pissing in my pants over here and really need some insight.

Thanks

 

[tantheman4]

this definitely happened to my friend to.. somebody was mocking the passionate talk between my friend and his girlfriend.. his girlfriend said something sweet and on the end somebody added a big "HAHAHAHA" like they are rubbing their abilities in our face

 

[Metalunna]

Original poster, have you considered the possibility that the "auto correct" feature kicked in and changed a word to a similarly spelled but different word?

no it was a completely different sentence altogether... I said something nice, it got changed to something not so nice... it wasn't done perfectly, it cut off the sentence before it at the next to last word instead of the period, which seems to support the theory of software replacing the text, but, it was in context of the previous two texts I had sent, so that kinda blows that theory unless it was some pretty smart software... which I doubt would exist just to mess with people

I've since removed all the little apps I had on my droid, just keeping the ones I actually use a lot made by "trustworthy" companies... who knows what actually happened... I guess I'll never know...

no it was a completely different sentence
/sorry..I had to do it..any day I can reference Airplane is a good day.

 

[kermitdfrogdroid]

Weird stuff. Is the word or phrase in common in most of these "I love you"? It seems all the people who came forward about this happening tot hem, were saying nice sweet things, and quoted a few above "I love you" Maybe its spyware app programmed to look for I love you

 

[ryanS]

yeah

yeah i would say that is definitely part of it. they were all between a couple and all changed something sentimental to something mean. Its possible that i got infected with some spyware because i just spent the weekend away on vacation in pennsylvania and i downloaded a couple apps including the grooveshark app while i was away so perhaps something malicious got in that way.

 

[AzJazz]

It sure sounds like a troublesome app has been loaded on your Droid that is causing this problem.

Here's some debugging tests you can run:

1) Taking one of your text messages that was corrupted in the past, re-send it - exactly the same, letter-for-letter - multiple times to your girlfriend. If it gets "hijacked" each time, you have a virus of some sort loaded. Note that it may not always send exactly the same text to her, since it may randomize how the message gets corrupted.

2) If you have a non-Android phone for Verizon handy, shut your Android phone totally off and pull the battery. Then, call Verizon and activate the standby phone (It will probably go easier when you explain to them what you are doing). Again, send multiple text messages of one of your corrupted messages to your girlfriend. If she still gets corrupted messages, then HER phone may have the virus if it is a smart phone. The virus may corrupt received messages to her phone.

If the problem appears to come from your Droid, I'm not sure if uninstalling the app alone (if you can even find it) will fix the issue. I would suggest uninstalling all of your apps from the Market, and then flashing the phone back to stock 2.1 (or, BBv0.4 for example). Be sure to do a factory & cache wipe. You may even want to remove your SD card, just to be sure.

If you have properly uninstalled everything from the Market, you won't get any apps reinstalled after your phone re-syncs on the first power-up. You should be able to text your GF's phone without any problems at that point.

This should fix your problem.

As far as I know, intercepting text messages and modifying them while en-route is difficult (like, nearly impossible) to do, unless Verizon has a virus on their SMS servers. I sure don't want to go there.

I'd be willing to bet a paycheck that: Your messages are either being corrupted before they leave your phone, or immediately after they are being received by your girlfriend's phone. Corruption mid-stream is extremely unlikely.

AzJazz

 

[mcatdtDroid]

I didn't read all of this, but I did see some people asking about techs doing this and I'm not sure all the background details between the O.P. and his wife (jealous ex's, etc)

but here's my story....


my wife and I divorced in 2008 and we had a lot of stuff tied together... bank accounts, loans... all the usual stuff, but this included cell phones, which were in her name since she worked for Alltel at the time.

Either way, before I finally just gave her back my phone and created the account I currently have, she had picked up a crappy phone that she set up on my number. She could then see all the texts that I sent or recieved, and in theory, send texts....

So examine if you are in a situation that allows for someone else on the same account to set up a new phone using the existing number. My ex used this technique to spy on me.... are you guys on a plan that includes one or the other's ex?

 

[glennj]

I once (using handcent SMS) sent a message to my friend Shawn and my girlfriend got it. Luckly we were both in the same room. I checked to see if I had made a mistake, it was clearly in the 'shawn' window. I even checked my SMSs to her and it wasnt there. Very odd. Also, he never got the message, just her.

Annoying cause what if I were to say somehting like "I wanna squeeze your boobies" or somehting silly to my girlfriend, and it would send to some other random person on my list. That would be instant crazyness!

I have definitely had something like this happen before with my Droid. It's almost as if the phone locked up on a thread to a person, even though I clearly had tapped on the person I wanted in the "Starred" contacts list. It brought up another person in my ongoing threads and I wound up sending a text to the wrong person.

As fantastic as it sounds, it does reek of a virus more than anything, and, as some have said, it opens up a whole new realized realm of security concerns, and the ages-old quandary of privacy with this echelon of phone.....(but it sure is fun theorizing about it, probably until it happens to me...)

 

[entcee]

I didn't read all of this, but I did see some people asking about techs doing this and I'm not sure all the background details between the O.P. and his wife (jealous ex's, etc)

but here's my story....


my wife and I divorced in 2008 and we had a lot of stuff tied together... bank accounts, loans... all the usual stuff, but this included cell phones, which were in her name since she worked for Alltel at the time.

Either way, before I finally just gave her back my phone and created the account I currently have, she had picked up a crappy phone that she set up on my number. She could then see all the texts that I sent or recieved, and in theory, send texts....

So examine if you are in a situation that allows for someone else on the same account to set up a new phone using the existing number. My ex used this technique to spy on me.... are you guys on a plan that includes one or the other's ex?

If she set up a phone with your number, wouldn't Verison cut your phone off? I did not know it was possible to have 2 phones with the same number at the same time.

 

[mchoffa]

well I haven't had this happen again luckily, but I watch what I send in text messages now more than I used to. I would be willing to bet more people will reply to this thread as time goes on and they are searching for the same thing.

My brain says this had to be some app taking over and editing the text on my end or her end, but there is a part of me that thinks it wasn't, only because the hijacked/changed version of my message referenced something I had said two messages before it, but not a word for word copy... it was in context with what I had said.

If there is software out there that can do that, well... we've all seen the movies about machines taking over

 

[SixStringTheory]

If there is software out there that can do that, well... we've all seen the movies about machines taking over

Well if all SkyNet's going to do is screw with text messages I can live with it ;-p

 

[R_G]

If there is software out there that can do that, well... we've all seen the movies about machines taking over

Well if all SkyNet's going to do is screw with text messages I can live with it ;-p

Skynet is located in Saudi Arabia. see >>>
RIM shares slip as UAE, Saudis move vs. BlackBerry - MarketWatch

I think its possible, 7 seconds might be enough time.

 

[sk61]

I note this thread hasn't been added to in quite a while but OP you're right, I'm posting here because something very similar has just happened to me.

I have an android phone but my wife has an iphone. Yesterday she called me asking whether I'd been texting her - she had just received 3 strange texts supposedly from me, which I hadn't sent (not only do I know I didn't send them but there's no evidence of those messages on my phone). At about the same time, I noticed that I received 3 texts supposedly from her, which she did not, in fact, send.

The messages were similar to messages we had sent each other over a month ago, but with the text slightly changed.
The messages were so old that I can't see them anymore on my phone because of the number of messages sent since but they could still be in memory somewhere.

I suspect it's malware on either of our phones. I've just installed every kind of security software I can find on my phone but I'm still worried who else on my contacts is getting strange messages - some of my contacts are clients and it can have significant impacts on my business if they start receiving strange messages they think are from me!

 

[Byakushiki]

This makes me question how effective our security measures are as we steadily trailblaze headfirst into the future. If hijacking an advanced piece of technology like an android is possible, what's stopping someone from hijacking an advanced piece of military equipment, like a uav or a whole fighter jet? If things in the future are as advanced as oh say...having a plane controlled subconciously (google search connection for flight interface), what's to stop someone from hacking into and taking control of it? Our security seems subpar for our level of tech.

Sent from somewhere in a strangereal world.

 

[kennedy63]

Bogus Text Messages

Hello ,
Although I'm new to this forum and not sure if this is the correct place for this post I do feel the need to vent a little. I just received my verizion cell phone bill and noticed I had 53 dollar's worth of overage txt messages. I noticed a number 000000006245 maybe with one or less zero .Anyway this number shows me receiving txts from this number and it also shows me sending messages to this number .I did neither.Of course I had to explain to the verizion rep a number of times this is an impossibility even though at first she said it shows me sending these messages as well.Since I was persistant she talked to another tech who then asked me if i had purchased a ring tone on this date in which I replied I did. She said well it must of been a third party site I then said no it was from the verizion ring tone app. And not just some off hand ringtone site.In the end they had to put a block on this number for 90 days.Hopefully it will work and i wont have to keep doing this every 90 days.I got looking and it had already started generating txt messsages on my next month's bill and i will have to call again to get this rectified.Needless to say I do not even want to purchase anything on my phone now.Im gun shy. Has this happend to anyone and do I need to get a good firewall set up or a app to prevent this from happening in the future.Any info would be apperciated.Would like to hear if this has happend to anyone else.Thanks...!