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Sprint network security questioned August 10, 2008 [Pocket PC phone] | By Alli Flowers. Is Sprint's network compromised? Are they having nationwide texting issues? More importantly, do their engineers have a clue as to what's going on? Some of you may know my tale of Sprint woe. One morning sms from short codes suddenly ceased. Hard resets and new phones wouldn't fix it. Sprint eventually changed my phone number and all was well, but it only lasted a few days before it all stopped again. Each even was prefaced with a vital portion of my online account missing, and a number of "blocks" found in my account by customer service. As I attempted to discover the reason, I found something that Sprint seems happy to studiously ignore: their network is wide open. I'm not a hacker, but I've known plenty of networking gurus, so I know that if a network is plainly visible to me, then there are plenty of people with the knowledge to access what I can only see. The proof is in this thread - http://discussion.treocentral.com/showthread.php?t=168807&highlight=sprint+network+resco – on Treo Central. Complete with screen caps, and corroboration by a number of Sprint customers, this thread details how by simply using RescoExplorer and Sprint's data connection, you can see a myriad of other devices connected to the same network. These people have detailed, documented, and reproduced the steps they've taken to view other devices (from pc's using broadband cards to Moguls), and have made sure that their WiFi is off. Yesterday (8/9/08) during my daily chat with Sprint customer service, I requested that the link to T|C's thread be passed on to Sprint's network engineers. After some prompting, the CSR agreed to let them know. I am even further from being a lawyer than I am from being a hacker, but as far as I can see, if they have been told there is an issue and choose to ignore it, any harm that may come from it will result in negligence. And again, if we ordinary people can see devices on the network, there are experts out there who can access those devices. Meanwhile, after 3 weeks of ongoing sms issues, Sprint's online CSR "Chenise" informed me that there was a nationwide texting issue and they were working on it. Wow. Nationwide issue. So how come I haven't heard of anyone else experiencing texting problems? And does this mean they've had a problem for 3 weeks and have been unable to resolve it in that amount of time? Or does it mean they've had a problem for that amount of time and have only just noticed it? Any way you look at it, Sprint is severely off their game and taking too cavalier an attitude towards the security of their customers. 
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