An item which may be of interest to Siemens mobile owners in Europe:
The SMS, among the 1 billion sent each day on the continent, can freeze or completely disable two cell phones made by German handset maker Siemens, spokesman Jacob Rice said here on Tuesday.
The e-mails contain a single word, taken from the phone"s language menu, surrounded by quote marks and preceded by an asterisk, such as "*English" or "*Deutsch", Siemens said.
Opening the short text message on a Siemens 35 series cell completely disables it, Rice said. Siemens 45 series phones are less impacted and can be resuscitated after about two minutes of work, Rice said. Both phones are sold only in Europe.
The phones are not the victim of a denial of service attack, as suggested by some participating in an e-mail string on Bugtraq, a popular security e-mail list, Rice said.
"It"s just not possible," Rice said.