A team of university researchers has devised a new side-channel attack named 'Freaky Leaky SMS,' which relies on the timing of SMS delivery reports to deduce a recipient's location.

A team of university researchers has devised a new side-channel attack named ‘Freaky Leaky SMS,’ which relies on the timing of SMS delivery reports to deduce a recipient’s location.

Interesting approach.

It seems like it would be pretty easy to mitigate on the OS level by adding a random delay to delivered receipts without any meaningful inconvenience to end users. A few seconds here or there isn’t going to make or break anything experience wise.

Or does that less than instantaneous response result in a bunch of extra traffic trying to redeliver messages?

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