Cellphone Hackers Can Get You!
Tuesday, December 02, 2008 Posted In adventure , cellphone , computer , credit , hackers , Honduras , Mexico , technology Edit This 0 Comments »
We went to Mexico for a day trip two weeks ago. Whilst there we had an interesting adventure recorded on this blog entry here. We took our three phones so we could call each other if necessary. Unbeknownst to us, one of our phone numbers had been hacked and, according to the invoice we got today, used to call various numbers in Honduras and Mexico bringing our bill to $1800.00.
Apparently, it is not difficult to mess with people's phones. I copied this from the WIRED website... "In the 17 minutes we wandered around, Laurie's computer picked up signals from 39 phones. "It takes only 15 seconds to suck down somebody's address book, so we could have had a lot of those," he says at last. "And at least five of these phones were vulnerable to an attack."
The "attack" Laurie mentions so casually could mean almost anything - a person using another person's cell to make long distance calls or changing every phone number in his address book or even bugging his conversations. There are, he says, "a whole range of new powers" available to the intrepid phone marauder, including nasty viral attacks." Click here to read the article in full.
Call your cellphone provider TODAY and find out how secure your phone is. Don't bother, we just spoke to ours and they told us, "Our system is absolutely secure. It was a one in a million occurence!" which is complete ROT because I looked it up already. If you have the right equipment, it's easy as pie. The trouble is that technology changes so fast the security measures have difficulty keeping up. It's not just your cell phone you need to be worried about. Anything that utilizes wireless technology is vulnerable.
So we are waiting with bated breath to see whether the cellphone company insist we pay the bill. We kindly reported the breach in their system to them. They cancelled the number. We requested a credit. They are thinking about it. We better get the whole thing credited or heads will roll.
Be aware. Turn your cellphone off when you don't need it. (Kind of defeats the purpose though eh?)
Apparently, it is not difficult to mess with people's phones. I copied this from the WIRED website... "In the 17 minutes we wandered around, Laurie's computer picked up signals from 39 phones. "It takes only 15 seconds to suck down somebody's address book, so we could have had a lot of those," he says at last. "And at least five of these phones were vulnerable to an attack."
The "attack" Laurie mentions so casually could mean almost anything - a person using another person's cell to make long distance calls or changing every phone number in his address book or even bugging his conversations. There are, he says, "a whole range of new powers" available to the intrepid phone marauder, including nasty viral attacks." Click here to read the article in full.
So we are waiting with bated breath to see whether the cellphone company insist we pay the bill. We kindly reported the breach in their system to them. They cancelled the number. We requested a credit. They are thinking about it. We better get the whole thing credited or heads will roll.
Be aware. Turn your cellphone off when you don't need it. (Kind of defeats the purpose though eh?)
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