Slashdot Mirror
News Corp. Hacking Scandal Spreads To Government
wiredmikey writes "The scandal revolving around the News Corporation's now defunct British tabloid, News of the World, has entered a new phase with news that the hacking extended into areas of national security, as detectives working for the Murdoch media empire may have hacked into the computer of a government minister responsible for Northern Ireland. Scary stuff, yet the enterprise security community seems strangely quiet on the topic, aside from showing other journalists how easy it is to do. Potentially, if you know the correct mobile number and you can guess four digits, you too can be listening to your elected leaders' personal messages. The chances are pretty good that it could be their birthday."
About 6 years ago when this all originally flared up, it became clear people were simply not changing their default voicemail pin-codes from the network supplied default. All you needed to do was call the mobile number, listen for which operator it was that was which was responsible for the voicemail, then punch in the default pin-code for that network operator.
At the time, this caused a few MNOs to change their systems so that you could not use remote voicemail until the user had set a new pin-code other than the default. In fact, its sad that operators were not somehow made partially liable for all this in the first place!
This is a British cultural problem, not a Murdoch problem.
Don't know where you live, mate, but Murdoch's (Rupert and Prince James, the News International heir apparent) have control over London Times, The Sun and News Of The World (now defunct) and wrote the cheques and managed the managers who made all this possible.
Any editor worth his pay packet, when presented with an astounding story, based upon what appears to be inside information, has to ask, "Where did you get this information?" When you are in James' place, overseeing the British arm of News International (incorrectly stated as News Corp in the article above) you have to do more than gaze in wonder at what a talented and resourceful lot you have under you. You should be paying the occasional visit to your managing editors and ask, "Where are we getting this?"
There has always been the ability of the government to enquire, which they've done a poor job of, just how the news knows some things. Dave's doing his best CYA, but it keeps going along. What are you going to do about foreign ownership of a large part of your media, Dave? Learning anything important, Dave?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar