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Subject: [ISN] Lax Security Exposes Voice Mail to Hacking, Study Says
From: InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews ! org>
Date: 2011-12-27 11:44:32
Message-ID: alpine.DEB.2.02.1112270542570.4315 () infosecnews ! org
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http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/26/technology/26iht-hack26.html
By KEVIN J. O'BRIEN
The New York Times
December 25, 2011
BERLIN -- It may be tempting to view the illegal interception of
telephone voice mails, a practice that has roiled Britain and the News
Corp. media empire of Rupert Murdoch, as an arcane tool employed by
scofflaw journalists with friends in Scotland Yard.
But according to a study to be presented Tuesday, cellphone users in
Europe and the rest of the world may be just as vulnerable as the actor
Hugh Grant and other celebrities to having their personal voice mail
hacked -- or worse -- because of outdated mobile network security.
In a study of 31 mobile operators in Europe, Morocco and Thailand,
Karsten Nohl, a Berlin hacker and mobile security expert, found that
many operators provided poor or weak defenses to protect consumers from
illicit surveillance and identity theft.
Mr. Nohl said he was able to hack into mobile conversations and text
messages and could impersonate the account identities of cellphone users
in 11 countries using an inexpensive, 7-year-old Motorola cellphone and
free decryption software available on the Internet. He has tested each
mobile operator more than 100 times, he said, and has ranked the quality
of their defenses.
[...]
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