2005/02/21

Can your phone be hacked? Ask Paris.

Paris Hilton's address book, famously kept on a T-Mobile Sidekick, has been popping up all over the internet after someone managed to figure out her password.

The Drudge Report says that it has confirmed the authenticity of many of the numbers, presumably a polite way of saying they've been crank calling Anna Kournikova and Lindsay Lohan all weekend. The FBI has reportedly opened an investigation.

Files exposed to the world also include Paris' travel habits, airline and hotel preferences, along with her private notes.

The information landed online just days after hacker Nicolas Jacobsen pled guilty to a single charge of intentionally accessing a protected computer and recklessly causing damage. Jacobsen was arrested by US authorities last October, but had had access to T-Mobile's servers for more than a year. He reportedly amused himself by accessing US Secret Service email, and raiding other Sidekick users' accounts.

William Genovese, a friend of Jacobsen's in the hacker community, told Security Focus that Jacobsen sent him pictures of celebrities, purportedly snapped with their camera phones. Genovese faces unrelated charges for allegedly selling leaked Microsoft source code.

While Paris must by now be used to being overexposed online, many of the people in her little black book were less than pleased with the leak. According to the Drudge Report, one starlet said "I gave her my number after we met in Miami, I did not know she f**king kept it on her cellphone!"

Reality TV star Victoria Gotti told New York Daily News that she had received over 100 phone calls in two hours. "It's driving me insane," she said.

Here is Jacobsen's story. The wrong person in the wrong place can cause so much havoc. What if this guy was a terrorist that just happened to have access to T-Mobile accounts? Just remember, you are secure only over what you control. Any activity that involves anyone else just busted through even your best security.

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