Erase SMS remotely, no it's not as easy

The disturbing Benalla affair whose SMS would have disappeared during her police custody, lifts the veil on the important flaws that our mobiles present today.Having a smartphone, however, requires some solid technical skills.

No, an SMS cannot simply disappear from a mobile phone.Whatever the method, this requires a certain technical dexterity.

This type of hacking- erase SMS remotely on the laptop of a third party- has just been worn in the spotlight with the "Benalla affair".The former employee of Emmanuel Macron told the investigating judges that SMS had "disappeared" while he consulted his phone with the investigators during his sight.Information reported by the newspaper Le Monde which has obtained hearing extracts from the former Elysée Mission official.

Disturbing affirmations because it is not as easy to make remotely disappear such content from a mobile phone.Certainly on the few methods that allow "to attack" the content of a device remotely, some are quite standard but require the action of the phone owner.A first method is to erase all the contents of the phone.It works from an application downloaded by the user.

If the latter loses or is robbed of his phone, he then warns his operator and can remotely erase all the information contained by his phone.All content is deleted and it is impossible to target a data more than another.A second method specifically concerns the disappearance of SMS.It is also based on a downloadable application and authorizes the deletion of SMS, from the moment it has not been read.

It is possible to replace or crush the contents of an SMS

The other two methods are more sophisticated and are necessarily the subject of a digital piracy act.The first of them is based on a flaw of the SS7 transport protocol.From this flaw-known by all industrialists in the sector-, a hacker can recover the unique identification number of mobile (the IMEI code).He intercepts it when information transit from one mobile network to another during their transport.The hacker can also recover this IMEI number using an imsi-catcher listening case.

Once this code is in his hands, the hacker can usurp the identity of the telephone owner and reach its content and in particular SMS.It can crush, erase or even replace the content of each of these messages but beware, in no case can it make any trace of these messages disappear.Even from it crushes or replaces the content part, it will always remain in the history the wording of the message such as the time and day of sending or reception, as well as the correspondent number.

Malware that erases messages locally

The second method is based on the use of malware, that is to say spy software, malicious.The latter was able to enter fraudulently into the mobile, via the download of an application or via a link that was in a message, an email and on which the user clicked.The pirate will then use this malware, take advantage of the internal flaws of smartphones bones to access conversations and in particular SMS.He can then erase them but only locally;There will always be a trace at the operator.

Suddenly, what to think of the testimony of Alexandre Benalla who claims to have seen with the investigators, his SMS erased as the consultation progresses.Without questioning his testimony, he was the victim of the hacking of his phone as explained above.Either the former Elysée employee confuses SMS with WhatsApp messages, an application for which such a handling is possible.Has he been dealing with a more than experienced hacker capable of bypassing all operators' safety devices;What experts find it difficult to believe.

One thing is certain, the mobile is today part of a heritage - personnel or business - that must be learned to protect.And you have to understand that he has become the privileged target of pirates.