Advice Request Can Your Phone Get Infected Just by Receiving a Text?

[always_forever]

This is something I've been trying to get to the bottom of and I know the scammers are constantly working on more insidious attacks.

Read an article a while back stating that malware could be deployed on your phone just by receiving a text (it didn't even need to be opened).

Does anyone know if that's true? I know some of them use multimedia messaging but that can't be initiated unless the text is open I thought?

If it is possible, is there an app that might prevent this? Maybe Calls Blacklist or Signal? I do run AV on the phone but it'd be nice to have something to protect the SMS threat vector.

 

[roger_m]

I don't think you can get infected just by receving a text. When I've recieved texts from scammers, they contain a link to a webpage which instructs you to download and install an infected APK file on Android devices. In order to get infected from these texts, you need to not only visit the link, but also manually download and install the malicious app.

 

[MacDefender]

A deep dive into an NSO zero-click iMessage exploit: Remote Code Execution

Posted by Ian Beer & Samuel Groß of Google Project Zero We want to thank Citizen Lab ...

googleprojectzero.blogspot.com

This is a write up on a zero click iMessage exploit that works just by receiving a text. This includes multiple layers of bypassing sandboxes and UNIX privilege escalation. Of course this is produced by a very advanced government sponsored hacking group and costs millions and was quickly discovered and patched. So it’s possible, yes, but not common and unless you’ve wronged a government intelligence agency….

 

[always_forever]

Thanks!

 

[Moonhorse]

If it is possible, is there an app that might prevent this? Maybe Calls Blacklist or Signal? I do run AV on the phone but it'd be nice to have something to protect the SMS threat vector.

Ios has spam protection , shows only trusted messages and rest are on spambox filtered by ios

I have never received single txt message except the ones i send myself (android)

But my sister receives like 10 messages a day(ios), i dont get it myself

 

[MacDefender]

Ios has spam protection , shows only trusted messages and rest are on spambox filtered by ios

I have never received single txt message except the ones i send myself (android)

But my sister receives like 10 messages a day(ios), i dont get it myself

I was horrified that my dad told me he clicks all the links on the “you won a free iPad” scams, just in case any of them are real (his words).

I had to explain that every time you do that, you are inviting more spammers.