News/Phone hacking etc

[RTSolvalou]

Since the news is once again leaving out the vital information, can anyone here explain how this is actually possible?, paying a guy at a phone provider to leak stuff sure, but a guy sitting at his pc hacking away into cyberspace hoping to magically hit a phone? (as in control what the phone is doing and scrape a copy of it's contents) rubbish (I know google has the power to purge market apps from phones though). short of compromising the data centre of the provider or using some device and sitting outside the target's house, what is it they are actually doing to steal voicemail messages?

Obviously I don't want/need to know the fine details, but the news is making it sound as easy as making a paper plane, I just want the truth lol.

 

[Neal]

Most people have obvious PIN numbers for their mobile phone voicemail (e.g. 1234, 1111, DOB) so if you know their mobile number you can dial their voicemail and probably get access to it.

 

[Grayfox]

Most people leave their bluetooth enabled on the phones and they don't know that.
1: It drains the battery faster.
2: That you can be hacked by leaving it on.

Bluetooth should be enabled only for file transfers, if you want to leave it on set the status to "Hidden" so no one can see that you are broadcasting but it is still not as safe as having it off.

 

[Ibonibo]

The Chaos Club Berlin showed that they can tap in on all mobile phone in a certain radius in seconds.
The encryption is nearly nil.
And a lot of those encryption lies with the providers and not the phone.

That doesn't mean that the mobile phone themselves would be sure.

There are Mobile phones with encryption, but both the caller and the callee needs to have the encrypted phone and they cost a lot. Good for terrorists though
As for what happend, there was certainly large brides involved to get their hands on secret numbers, Pins, puks, ....

And as the others stated a lot of breaching, whether on a mobile or PC is done by the incompetence of the user (1111, 1234, god, sex, password1,... are not safe)

Open a text file, swipe over your keyboard with the whole hand (ufvgoruedn3oprl) replace some with Maj. (ufvGoruEdn3oprL) add a sign (ufv?GoruEdn!3oprL), and you have a safe password.


Also writting a password or pin down on a post-it and placing it on the screen of the PC is also not very smart....

A new one i heard which is not bad, is putting your serial number (phone, ipod) as password.

 

[Thaddaeus]

think or compare hacking some IT stuff as beeing a clever lawyer beeing able to get through with idiotic lawsuits.
When you have good functional knowledge and can relate that to the lazyness of most people, its quite easy to undersstand where you need to put the lever to have effect.

 

[Sprite]

From what I can gather the hacking was taking place via phone companies giving information to the papers to access the voicmail or some phones.

 

[eSZee]

And as the others stated a lot of breaching, whether on a mobile or PC is done by the incompetence of the user (1111, 1234, god, sex, password1,... are not safe)

Open a text file, swipe over your keyboard with the whole hand (ufvgoruedn3oprl) replace some with Maj. (ufvGoruEdn3oprL) add a sign (ufv?GoruEdn!3oprL), and you have a safe password.

When you do that random password, you'd still have to save that text file right? So that you can use it when needed and not get locked out of your own device. How is that different than having a post it stuck to your monitor?

 

[Thaddaeus]

When you do that random password, you'd still have to save that text file right? So that you can use it when needed and not get locked out of your own device. How is that different than having a post it stuck to your monitor?

usually the text/password you type is encrypted and then saved. When you enter your password its encrypted again and compared with the stored encrypted one.
at least thats how it should be done. It does not offer 100% security but is of course better than nothing.

 

[Ibonibo]

When you do that random password, you'd still have to save that text file right? So that you can use it when needed and not get locked out of your own device. How is that different than having a post it stuck to your monitor?

I don't save my passwords on the PC (best name it directly password.txt )

I made myself a booklet with all my accounts information in it (shops, forums, email,...) and that is hidden somewhere in the room.

Not ideal for travelling,... but safer than most

The post-it reference I made is especially for work PC's.
If you work in a big office, it's surprising to see how often Passwords are written on post-its and stuck on the PC self.

Not a big problem at home, just don't leave your password for your porndrive in sight