Mobile Handset Snatching On the Rise In Karachi: ProPakistani

Mobile Handset Snatching On the Rise In Karachi
PHC Reinstates 95 PTCL Employees
SMS Bombers, What They are? and How they Work?

Mobile Handset Snatching On the Rise In Karachi

Posted: 24 Nov 2010 01:40 PM PST

Mobile Handset Snatching On the Rise In Karachi is a post from: ProPakistani

Cell Phone Snatched Theft1 229x300 Mobile Handset Snatching On the Rise In Karachi

Click on Image to Enlarge

The mobile handset snatching has been on the rise in the Karachi as an average 3,000 cases are reported every month in the city of highest cellular tele-density in Pakistan.

Citizen Police Liaison Committee (CPLC) Karachi latest statistics suggested that the number of crimes cases reported against handset snatching has been reached more than 30,000 from January to October 2010 in the city. The figures showed that both crimes considered as cases of mobile handset snatching and thefts.

The average incidents of mobile handset snatching was almost same as 3,000 per month in the last fiscal year 2009-10.

The CPLC registered the cases itself on the request of victim of the crime at their centers or through online forms. It also obtained their information on the local police stations of Karachi.

According to an estimate, more than 120 million connections of different companies are operated in Karachi and its nearing cities. The rising handset crimes forced them to buy low-cost handset to protect them from lost of costly handsets.

Read more on this here Telecom Recorder

PHC Reinstates 95 PTCL Employees

Posted: 24 Nov 2010 12:10 PM PST

PHC Reinstates 95 PTCL Employees is a post from: ProPakistani

The Peshawar High Court (PHC) on Wednesday reinstated 95 employees of Pakistan Telecommunication Limited (PTCL), reported Daily Times.

A PHC two-member bench comprising Chief Justice Ejaz Afzal Khan and Justice Mazhar Alam Miankhel allowed writ petition of PTCL employees and restored them on their old positions in the company.

Fayaz Afzal and other 94 terminated employees working on different positions including wireman, cable guards, drivers and computer operators, had filed a writ petition in the high court through Ejaz Sabi advocate praying the court to restore them as they were unlawfully terminated from their jobs.

Counsel for the petitioners contended that these PTCL contract employees were working in the company since 1999. In 2006, he said, PTCL and Telecom Foundation had signed an agreement under which all these employees were given to Telecom Foundation. He said that the Telecom Foundation then terminated all the employees in 2006.

The petitioners' lawyer told the court that Telecom Foundation had no authority to terminate them from their jobs as they were the employees of the PTCL. He said that the Telecom Foundation's termination order was unlawful and thus be set aside.

After hearing of the case, the bench declared the employees' termination order as void and directed the PTCL to reinstate the employees on their old positions in the company.

SMS Bombers, What They are? and How they Work?

Posted: 24 Nov 2010 04:26 AM PST

SMS Bombers, What They are? and How they Work? is a post from: ProPakistani

Screen shot of a SMS Bomber Application

The phenomenon of SMS Bomber is getting popular these days. There are many mobile subscribers who are terrified by the bombardment of thousands of text messages on their mobile phones from unknown numbers.

By defination, SMS bomber is an application which sends unlimited text messages to a mobile phone number, leaving the phone subscriber with no option but to switch off his/her phone. Deleting those messages later on is added headache for the users.

The interesting thing about SMS Bomber is that it doesn't require name/phone number or anything to send messages, instead it only requires target's phone number – a very secure way to annoy anyone anonymously.

Very same thing happened to me today. I got some 100 plus text messages, which actually annoyed me to the level of investigating the root cause and the working of SMS bombers.

After googling, I found out that SMS Bomber is basically a window application with very simple interface. This application takes a mobile number as input and uses web services to send text messages to the specified number.

When self tested, and intensively analyzed the network traffic, we found that there were number of http POST requests sent to a particular IP address with my number.

How SMS Bomber Works (Our Findings):

There are services offered by cellular companies on their websites to get your mobile numbers registered, subscribe for new services etc. These webpages take mobile number as input – in return to which they send text messages (containing PIN codes/ passwords/ confirmations etc) to mobile numbers
SMS Bomber takes a mobile number as input
Then posts this mobile number to any of cellular companies' web pages
Cellular company sends relative SMS to that mobile number
SMS Bomber repeats this process several hundred times, resulting several hundred text messages delivered to the victim cell number

Tips for Cellular Companies (to Avoid SMS Bombers):

Consider using CAPTCHA
Consider implementing strict rules for sending back to back repetitive SMS on same number
Restricting http POST request can be helpful too

If webpages and services are configured properly, cellular companies can completely get rid of such annoying application.