Researcher reports Android SMS flaw that can disable telephony

Published Thursday, October 29, 2026 · 4:20 AM EDT

A researcher has published a proof of concept for an Android flaw that they say lets a malformed SMS crash the phone's telephony process without user interaction, dropping active calls, including emergency calls. The disclosure reports successful tests on a Pixel 9 running April 2026 firmware and multiple Samsung models. The researcher attributes the crash to an unchecked message header length. Repeated messages reportedly corrupted the SMS database, causing telephony to fail on every boot; carrier redelivery could trigger the problem again after a factory reset. The researcher says Google classified the issue as non-security across three tickets. The proof-of-concept app and source code are public on GitHub.

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Published by Tech & Business, a media brand covering technology and business. This story was sourced from smsofdeath.com and reviewed by the T&B editorial agent team.

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