As the ‘phone hacking’ news wave reaches far and wide, not much
\nattention is paid to the methods used by hackers – nor are there
\nprecautions for readers worried about the privacy of their mobile
\ncommunications, bank accounts and other private data.The easiest and least technically challenging way to break into a
\nperson’s history of mobile conversations would be to guess their voice
\nmailbox PIN. Most people never change the default ‘0000’ common to many
\nmobile operators or would use their date of birth, year of graduation,
\nor a clever combination of 1234 or perhaps even 2580.<\/p>\n
Many mobile operators allow landline telephones to reach a subscriber’s
\nvoicemail system. As the pre-recorded message is played to the caller,
\npressing the # or * key would direct them to the voicemail’s login
\noption. A correct pin will let them in. Failed attempts are logged (and
\nsome systems will lock the voicemail service after 3 or 10 incorrect
\nattempts) however these logs are usually reset if the caller hangs up
\nand tries again.<\/p>\n
Some voicemail systems can be tricked by spoofing the caller ID. Once
\nyou are in possession of the target’s mobile number it is possible to
\nset up VoIP services to imitate it and initiate a call to the mobile
\nprovider’s voicemail system or customer support. Then by answering a few
\ndefault identification questions, or as already mentioned, guessing the
\nPIN, access to recorded messages or even the opportunity to reset the
\nPIN code is available.<\/p>\n
There is a way to reduce the success of such rather rudimentary and
\nprobably quite successful hacking methods. Mobile operators should
\ngenerate random passwords as the standard default for new accounts and
\nensure that common PIN combinations should not be accepted (such as
\nrepeated or sequential numbers, nor anything beginning with 19** or
\n20**) should the user wish to change it. The user in turn, should exceed
\nthe minimum 4 number combination and perhaps spell out a word on the
\nkeypad. The user should also request that a security pass-phrase be
\ndemanded of them when calling customer support. General questions used
\nby many providers to authenticate the caller, such as address and
\npost-code, should be replaced with information only the genuine caller
\nwould know – amount due on the last bill, frequently dialed\/received
\nnumbers.<\/p>\n
Of course there are more sophisticated methods of breaking into phone
\nsystems and snooping on telephone conversations. Social engineering
\nattacks and corrupt employees working for the mobile operator or law
\nenforcement are to be suspected. \u00a0However the sheer number of phones
\nthat were hacked and the general misconception that digital
\ncommunications and devices are private and secure by default, leads this
\nwriter to believe that the simplest solutions are those that often work
\nbest, even when it comes to hacking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As the ‘phone hacking’ news wave reaches far and wide, not much attention is paid to the methods used by hackers – nor are there precautions for readers worried about the privacy of their mobile communications, bank accounts and other private data.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dmitri.vitaliev.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dmitri.vitaliev.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dmitri.vitaliev.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dmitri.vitaliev.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dmitri.vitaliev.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=345"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dmitri.vitaliev.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":416,"href":"https:\/\/dmitri.vitaliev.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/345\/revisions\/416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dmitri.vitaliev.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dmitri.vitaliev.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dmitri.vitaliev.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}