Intellectual Property Law

Audio: Helpful Hacker Gives a Security Lesson to Paris Hilton

By Ryan Singel, Kevin Poulsen, Sarah Lai Stirland, Kim Zetter, and David Kravets

In this week's Phreaky Phriday audio track, socialite and frequent hacker target Paris Hilton gets an earnest lesson in telephone security from 24-year-old white hat phone phreak Lucky225, in August, 2006.

Lucky: You got something to write with?

Paris: Ummm, no, 'cause I'm lying on a table.

Lucky: Oh.

Lucky goes on to school Hilton on the ins-and-outs of securing her voice mail and her phone account. You'll recall that Hilton's Sidekick was hacked in 2004 by then-20-year-old Nicolas Jacobson, who snatched up private photos of the celeb using an unpatched hole in T-Mobile's network. Then another hacker staged his own raid on her phone, and released Hilton's address book on the internet.

Lucky: As long as you got into your voice mail and you set it so that it requires a password, nobody will be able to break into your voice mail.

Hilton: Has anybody broken into my Blackberry yet, like the e-mail journal?

Lucky: Not that I'm aware of

Hilton: How do you know everything?

Lucky: I've been in the phone hacking scene for quite a long time ... In fact, I had left you a voice mail back in September of 2004, and you actually took down my phone number, but I don't think you had actually called me back, about how T-Mobile was insecure. And, like, I think a couple days later was when somebody hacked your shit.

Hilton: I know. It happened on my birthday.

Lucky: It happened on your birthday?

Hilton: Yeah, that's so sad. ? People are mean.

Lucky: I know. They are. But other than that, you're going to want to call Cingular and add a password to this account, because I know that you don't have a password on this account right now.

Hilton: What do you-- a password, like how?

Lucky: Call 866-CINGULAR or call 6-1-1 from your phone.

Hilton: Uh huh.

Lucky: And tell them that you want to add a password to the account for customer service. 'Cause if you don't have a password on your account for customer service, anyone can call Cingular and just break into your account

Hilton: And do what? ? And see all my shit?

See Also:

• Poll: How Good Is the Blind Hacker? Mitnick Weighs In
• Swatter Gang Hounded White Hat Phreaker
• Blue Boxing Comes to VoIP

(Photo: Lucky225 on Doug TV. Courtesy Charlie Douglas/TapeTwo Productions)

Full post as published by Threat Level on March 07, 2008 (boomark / email).