The Nokia 1100 mystery: Why are criminals reportedly paying $32,000 for a five-year-old cellphone?

By Chris Parry, Vancouver SunApril 22, 2009

The mysterious Nokia 1100 cellphone. Criminal elements are reportedly offering as much as $32,000 for used versions of this phone that were produced in Bochum Germany in 2002, due to an alleged exploit that potentially allows banking fraud.Photograph by: Handout, ..

If you've got a drawer filled with derelict electrical circuits, cables and cellphones, you might want to have a good look at its contents. Seems if you're the owner of an old Nokia 1100 cellphone that was made in a factory in Bochum Germany around 2002, you could be sitting on a gold mine.

Well, a small gold mine. Okay, a small car in need of an oil change. Still ... bonus!

Seems Russian, Moroccan and Romanian crime gangs are offering as much as $32,000 for a functioning Nokia 1100 to sellers through Craigslist and eBay, as well as underground black market websites.

Why would they do such a thing? Because that version of the 1100 was one of the first produced and allegedly has a flaw in the firmware that allows it to be reprogrammed to receive someone else's phone number. Because cellphone banking is big business in Europe, such a hack would allow euro-gangsters to intercept another person's banking ID codes, which would make it possible to transfer money at their will.

Or at least that's the rumour. Suffice to say, the gangsters aren't exactly clamouring to confirm it, and Nokia officials simply shrug and say they're not aware of any reason why anyone would pay above the odds for an 1100 handset.

The original Nokia 1100 sold for around $100. Some 200 million of them were produced, mostly for sale in developing world countries, though a large number ended up being used as 'disposable' phones by drug dealers.

A Dutch security company, Ultrascan, is actively pursuing one of the handsets in question so they can attempt to replicate the hack, but competition for the aging electronica is somewhat fierce. That rapid rise in prices being paid for the phone is what reportedly alerted security experts to the potential exploit.

You can buy a stock standard Nokia 1100 on eBay for $0.99 (plus $15 shipping), but the specific kind of handset required by the criminal element is a little harder to come by. For those, you're looking at $700 on most online market sites, which is still a decent return on a phone most would use as a doorstop.

cparry@vancouversun.com

Microsoft suspende suporte ao Windows XP

Felipe Zmoginski, de INFO Online
Terça-feira, 14 de abril de 2009 - 09h12



Os usuários não desistem desse velhinho

SÃO PAULO - A Microsoft suspende, nesta terça-feira (14), o suporte ao seu mais bem sucedido sistema operacional, o Windows XP. A decisão, no entanto, não vai afetar a segurança de quem continua rodando XP em sua máquina.

A fabricante do Windows decidiu mudar o status do XP, que entra agora para o grupo dos produtos com “suporte estendido”. Na prática, isto quer dizer que a Microsoft só vai fornecer gratuitamente suporte para aspectos de segurança, como correções de falhas e patchs para proteger o sistema de novos códigos maliciosos.

Suporte para incompatibilidade com novos aplicativos e correções não relacionadas a segurança só serão feitos para usuários que assinam o plano Extended Hotfix Support.

O fim do suporte principal ao XP faz parte de uma série de esforços da Microsoft para forçar os usuários finais e empresas a migrar para os novos produtos da Microsoft, notadamente o Windows Vista e, futuramente, o Windows 7.

A decisão impacta também integradores que continuam oferecendo máquinas novas com downgrade para Windows XP. Segundo a Microsoft, o fabricante que oferecer este produto deverá ele próprio garantir suporte ao consumidor e não mais a fabricante do Windows.

As atualizações de segurança, no entanto, estão garantidas até 8 de abril de 2014, o que dá mais cinco anos de fôlego para quem não deseja abrir mão do Windows XP.