iPhone causing denial of service attacks
Could it be too good to be true ? The iPhone is one of the tech marvels that happens once in a few years, and it has shown itself to be a revolution in the designing of phones, although the restriction on carriers and the relatively slow network are acting as hobble-stones.
Well, in the latest news on this area, the iPhones have been caught to be behaving very strangely on the Duke University campus, with around 150 iPhones (a fraction of what would be available once the students come back from holiday) bring several wireless access points to a halt, in an imitation of a Denial of Service attack, probably the last thing that Apple wants to hear at this point:
The iPhone is flooding wireless access points at the US Duke University with MAC address requests, resulting in a denial of service-like attack that is taking out 20 to 30 access points for 10 to 15 minutes at a time – weird! The iPhones are asking for an address that isn’t on Duke University’s network, and when the iPhones don’t get a response, they keep on sending out requests, flooding the available bandwidth.
Help has been sought from Cisco, the maker of the school’s networking equipment, and technical support has been sought from Apple, although there is only speculation online as to precisely what might have caused the problem – Apple isn’t saying anything yet as it no doubt investigates the problem. When the fix inevitably comes, either the iPhone, Cisco’s equipment, or both, will simply be patched with a software update to resolve the problem.
So even though it will probably be a short-lived problem, the fact that such a problem occurred reflects badly on Apple's quality regime. And it is good that it happened at a time when the university was thinly populated, otherwise at peak times and if happening in a number of places at the same time, the problem would have been magnified many times and probably resulted in a loss of face for Apple.
1 comment:
NetworkWorld.com: Duke IT staff & their Cisco network confused by Apple iPhones; trade rags take bait
Let me see if I can wrap my head around this -- some bored students figured out what the MAC address range is on the iPhones, and they styled an attack using a couple of Linux machines hidden somewhere on campus to masquerade as Apple 'troublemakers', and are sniggering at the resulting buffoonery created between the Duke 'network admins' and the press.
Hello!?!??!? If these are actually the people responsible for Duke's network, they would have better communication skills -- what they are saying is happening is less unlikely than impossible (unless the iPhone and Cisco's routers' SuperPowers are being boosted by the Earth's yellow sun and are no longer hindered by their original design limitations).
Why has this been going on for several days and yet no one has reported the same issue on another network?
It's because: It's not happening on Duke's network, either. It's a hack. A scam. A ruse.
By some students who can probably be identified by a duct-taped WiFi canon made from a couple of Pringles cans protruding from their backpacks.
The 'reporter' should be ashamed for not doing his homework.
Post a Comment