Phone 7.5 SMS denial-of-service exploit has given me yet another reason to be a bit skeptical of Windows Phone. While Phone has slowly turned into a fairly capable product, they have had many growing pains along the way. Now it seems that this exploit has shown up in Mango, which works by sending a text message to any Mango device causing it to reboot and disable the messaging hub. It can also be triggered through Windows Live messages and even Facebook. The exploit isn’t widely known or used at this time, but it just shows how many security flaws that Phone 7 has run in to. Early on many users complained that Phone 7 didn’t offer on-device encryption and lack of VPN. It’s funny because Windows Mobile 6 was considered a highly secure and capable product. I love Windows Phone 7’s interface (which we all know is coming to 8 as Metro), but WP7’s security issues have likely hurt its reputation, and this new messaging exploit won’t help matters. Will Microsoft get it fixed quickly? Yes, Microsoft is great at taking care of existing security issues, what I wish they were better at though is keeping them from having happened to begin with. Notably, I will admit that similar security flaws regarding SMS have appeared both in Android and iOS, so perhaps I’m being a bit too hard on Microsoft here. Do I think that Windows Phone 7 is worth investing in? Almost. Windows Vista wasn’t well received due to initial problems, but after a few patches it actually was a fairly good OS. This is also happening with Phone 7, I just hope it doesn’t turn out like Vista, where the reputation is ruined by the time it turns into a good OS. What do you think of Windows Phone 7? Is it’s security issues really any worse for wear than other major mobile platforms? I think that it is probably true that Android, at least, has just as many security issues involved, but it is still a bit disappointing considering Windows Mobile was a rather secure experience. WM6 was boring, sure, but at least we felt safe using it. Again, I might be expecting too much out of Microsoft here. I may have to take a leap of faith and just get a WP7.5 device when I’m ready to replace my current phone (likely in the next 3-6 months). What do you think? Share your thoughts below.]]>
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