Acidus wrote:

Charlie: This is complete BS. You can diff a jailbroken kernel with a standard iPhone kernel and there are very few places that are changed. In particular, it doesn't mess with anything that has to do with the communication with the carrier. Even if it did do something crazy, which it doesn't, I would hope that the towers are robust enough to handle it. Just as the software in the iPhone should be able to handle any type of input it receives, the cell towers should too. I hope the carriers adequately test their equipment. If not, they can always give me a call, I'd be happy to help. In other words, if all it takes for a terrorist to take down cellular communication in this country is have a jailbroken iPhone, we’re in trouble.

I like Charlie a lot. He (like Gary McGraw) is way smarter than I while being very understated (which is most refreshing in this space).

However I hope Charlie does not seriously believe that one part of the cell network is flawed (as Zane and Luis showed) and while another part is not.

If someone held a gun to my head and said "Do the towers have input validation issues?" I would say with conviction "hell yes."

It only logical. The cell network has been a closed system for years. Equipment built and controlled by a small number of companies talking with other equipment built and controlled by a small number of companies. These systems are engineered to withstand random, not deliberate, error. New widget FOO has a bug that causes it to send bad messages that crashes BAR? Well then obviously there is a bug in FOO. Call Ed over at FOO! Apparently their engineers need to read the BAR spec again! Never mind that BAR utterly crapped itself the fault clearly lies with FOO. Throw in a few decades of legacy technology and I have no doubts there are problems.

You would be correct.