Microsoft has identified and fixed the root cause of an SMS bug in its Windows Phone software. The bug, reported to the company in December by Khaled Salameh, allows malicious SMS messages to force devices to shutdown and disable access to the messaging hub upon reboot. The flaw has not yet been publicly disclosed.

Microsoft has tested a fix and plans to incorporate this in a future update of Windows Phone, possibly as soon as the upcoming 7.5 update (Tango) due in April. There is no word on whether the company has addressed the various crash problems with its desktop applications, which also fell victim to the same malicious string used in the SMS bug, but Windows Phone users will have access to the fix once the usual carrier testing is complete.