Getting SMS messages from the Huawei E3372 LTE modem

Posted on February 13, 2019 Updated on February 13, 2019

If you’ve bought a modem from Optus, here in Australia, you may be delighted – and disappointed that the SMSs that are received on the Modem, are now served through a web interface.

I wasn’t happy about this, as I wanted to interrogate the SMS database through the “Mobile Partner” program. So, because Optus have custom firmware it’s basically not possible to do this (Yes, I was on the phone to both parties), it has caused me to look elsewhere. If you wanted to use a custom firmware, go for it, but I couldn’t be bothered.

Specifically, I have an E3372 modem.

I came across this post and information, it got me thinking…

The same hackaround can be used to programatically send SMS from the LAN using the E3372 API, here’s a simple script that does just that:

#!/bin/bash

DATA=`curl http://192.168.8.1/api/webserver/SesTokInfo`
SESSION_ID=`echo "$DATA" | grep "SessionID=" | cut -b 10-147`
TOKEN=`echo "$DATA" | grep "TokInfo" | cut -b 10-41`

curl http://192.168.8.1/api/sms/send-sms -H "Cookie: $SESSION_ID" -H "__RequestVerificationToken: $TOKEN" --data "<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?><request><Index>-1</Index><Phones><Phone>$1</Phone></Phones><Sca></Sca><Content>$2</Content><Length>-1</Length><Reserved>1</Reserved><Date>-1</Date></request>"

Use it like this:

After studying the code a little, I’ve been able to discover that the SMS messages can easily be read from the stick, as XML.

Request URL:http://192.168.8.1/api/sms/sms-list
Request method:POST
Remote address:192.168.8.1:80

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<response>
<Count>12</Count>
<Messages>
<Message>
<Smstat>1</Smstat>
<Index>40013</Index>
<Phone>OPTUS</Phone>
<Content>An SMS you tried to send or receive has failed as you are out of credit for that message type. Recharge now to allow future SMS messages to be sent or received.</Content>
<Date>2019-02-13 16:04:02</Date>
<Sca></Sca>
<SaveType>4</SaveType>
<Priority>0</Priority>
<SmsType>1</SmsType>
</Message>
<Message>
<Smstat>0</Smstat>
<Index>40011</Index>
<Phone>OPTUS</Phone>
<Content>An SMS you tried to send or receive has failed as you are out of credit for that message type. Recharge now to allow future SMS messages to be sent or received.</Content>
<Date>2019-02-13 16:03:20</Date>
<Sca></Sca>
<SaveType>4</SaveType>
<Priority>0</Priority>
<SmsType>1</SmsType>
</Message>
</Messages>
</Response>

This should be enough to get me started, and once again (possibly) start to read SMS messages from my (new) USB Modem.

While I haven’t tried this method fully yet, but in theory this will be completely possible.

This may also remove the need for Gammu as well.

For other valuable information on these devices (which are all very similar)
https://blog.hqcodeshop.fi/archives/259-Huawei-E5186-AJAX-API.html
http://www.gnuton.org/blog/2015/07/huawei-e3372/
http://blog.asiantuntijakaveri.fi/2015/07/convert-huawei-e3372h-153-from.html
https://sh.com.hr/en/modificiranje-huawei-e3372-lte-sticka/