Nokia 1100 – “Sold for $32000”

The Nokia 1100 wasn’t a phone I was expecting to write about this morning but yet when I heard that someone paid almost $32000 USD to get their hands on one I was slightly intrigued.

The Nokia 1100 has become part of a banking fraud scandal. Don’t expect to see that kind of money for a couple of reasons though. The reasons for this are that the scammers are looking for handsets specifically built in a Nokia plant over in Bochum in Germany. The reason for this particular models wanted status is that the handsets built there have flawed software and hardware which allows the phone to be made as a working copy of someone else’s phone… so with this in mind it makes it possible to act as the person with out the original owner ever knowing.

The loophole that the criminals are allegedly using is that many European banks now send temporary transaction authentication numbers or mTANs as SMS to the account holders as a security feature for authorizing online money transfers.

This is where the supposedly counterfeit-capable Nokia 1100 handsets step in. As they receive the SMS intended for the authorized account holder, criminals can acquire a working mTAN and initiate a transfer after they have stolen the needed online ID credentials in some other way.

Nokia are claiming there is no loophole although investigations will obviously be continuing.

Via: GSMArena