Phones using a number of popular versions of the Symbian S60 mobile OS (the Nokia N95, E71 and N76 just to name a few) can be partially disabled by a maliciously coded text.
The attack has been lamely dubbed "The Curse of Silence" and it’s pretty simple. Due to a glitch in the way that the S60 messaging client handles text messaging, any message from a sender with a name length of over 32 characters, and a small identifier that flags the message as "Internet Electronic Mail." This combination of otherwise rare circumstances causes the messaging client to silently stop receiving any SMSes until the device undergoes a factory reset.
More …