What did I do with that packaging?įortunately, because he wouldn’t have found the bug without it, Schütz located the original SIM packaging stashed somewhere in a cupboard, scratched off the protective strip that obscures the PUK, and typed it in.Īt this point, given that he was in the process of starting up the phone after it ran out of power, he should have seen the phone’s lockscreen demanding him to type in the phone’s unlock code… (We’ve been there, done that, locked ourselves out.)Īfter that, you need to enter a 10-digit “master PIN” known as the PUK, short for personal unblocking key, which is usually printed inside the packaging in which the SIM gets sold, which makes it largely tamper-proof.Īnd to protect against PUK guessing attacks, the SIM automatically fries itself after 10 wrong attempts, and needs to be replaced, which typically means fronting up to a mobile phone shop with identification. In Schütz’s case, it was the humble PIN on his SIM card that stumped him, and because SIM PINs can be as short as four digits, they’re protected by a hardware lockout that limits you to three guesses at most. We’ve all been there, scrabbling for a charger or a backup battery pack to get the phone rebooted to let people know we have arrived safely, are waiting at baggage reclaim, have reached the train station, expect to get home in 45 minutes, could stop at the shops if anyone urgently needs anything, or whatever we’ve got to say.Īnd we’ve all struggled with passwords and PINs when we’re in a rush, especially if they’re codes that we rarely use and never developed “muscle memory” for typing in. Simply put, he found the bug because he forgot to turn off or to charge his phone before setting off on a lengthy journey, leaving the device to run low on juice unnoticed while he was on the road.Īccording to Schütz, he was rushing to send some messages after getting home (we’re guessing he’d been on a plane) with the tiny amount of power still left in the battery…
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