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A technology blog for The Economist Group IT team

Thursday, February 24, 2005

Sidekick hacked?

There's been a lot written about how Paris's mobile 'phone was hacked into, but it seems the reality was a bit more mundane. Rather than having been "blue-jacked" (I don't think that the Sidekick II has Bluetooth) it seems that someone hacked into T-Mobile's Customer account management system and was then able to bypass another (sic) layer of security to send a password allowing access to Paris Hilton's account to his own T-Mobile 'phone. He did this by spoofing the referring page so that the system thought he had arrived at a page from one which he (they always are aren't they?) had been authenticated to. Once there he was able to view the e-mail, camera phone pics and 'phone book of Hilton.

In the little I've read or heard people were saying how dim Hilton had been in allowing the data to get into the wrong hands. Rather the opposite seems to have been the case in that if she hadn't bothered to back her data up onto T-Mobile's systems all would still be intact. The moral of this story probably doesn't apply to us: if you're rich, infamous and court publicity don't store your contacts online. Of course I could be the victim of a hoax.....
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