How are people's cells getting hacked?

[BBfangirl]

I keep reading about celebrities' cells getting hacked, or in this recent news article, about a tabloid paper hacking into murder victims and the British royalty's cell phones.
http://news.yahoo.com/uk-phone-hacki...133032366.html
How is this done, and how does one safe-guard against someone hacking into their phone?

[shengchieh]

- Don't download stuffs from who-knows-where.
- Don't open email/messaging attachment including pictures) unless you are sure it's good.

I would guess the same preventive measure as for a computer.

Sheng-Chieh

[Melab]

I suspect that bribery and social engineering were used.

[strutswell]

Did they actually "hack" (crack) into people's phones? Was there any "wire tapping" going on?

All that I've read about this is that the voicemails were being listened to, so I assume they were doing some kind of brute-force to crack into their voicemail account.

Anyone heard something more about this?

[cmstlist]

My impression is the most common method was to spoof the victim's caller ID and use that to phone their voicemail service. If it was configured to allow no-password access when called from the phone itself, then the spoofing succeeded in breaking through to the victim's box.

[strutswell]

My impression is the most common method was to spoof the victim's caller ID and use that to phone their voicemail service. If it was configured to allow no-password access when called from the phone itself, then the spoofing succeeded in breaking through to the victim's box.

That sounds pretty interesting, is there any proof that this method actually works?

If so, then I wonder why this isn't done more often with such a large security hole.

[cmstlist]

I can vouch for the fact that, using caller ID spoofing, many telco services are fooled into thinking you're calling from their own network. For example I once fooled AT&T and Fido's "mobile to mobile" free minutes by spoofing a number on the network. I also found if I called my voicemail number on Fido using a spoof of my own number, it reached my voicemail directly. However, in the interest of keeping this thread legitimate, I will not name which VoIP provider made spoofing so easy :P

Sent from my Nexus One using Tapatalk

[JimBrown1]

I am new to this forum community, I am very glad to join this community and I want to share my ideas and knowledge resources with the forum members as well as keen to increase my information bank also.
Thanks.

[Lladnek25]

My girlfriend is cheating on me!! I saw her kiss this guy twice and when I confronted her on it she said: I can kiss whoever I please!!!! We talked and agreed to never contact this guy again but she is still texting him, I saw his number w/no name on her cell phone.
Is there anyway I can see/hack into her cell w/o her knowing and not having her phone in hand? She keeping an extremely close eye on it!
Her ph is a Sprint LG rumor touch, with an android OS and I have the imei.

[strutswell]

No

Dump her if she's cheating, are you crazy?

Don't try to hack into someone's phone...you'll go to prison lol is it worth it?

At least you'll find lots of people there (in prison) who want to have their way with you!

[Daveoc64]

This is going back to the original post, all the "hackers" were doing was accessing people's Voicemail by using the default PIN (usually 1111 or 1234).

Really it wasn't very sophisticated.

Changes have been made in the UK since then to help stop this happening (like disabling remote access until you change the PIN).

If you want to help stop yourself being hacked, simply make sure you change the Voicemail PIN to something that's not guessable.

[BBfangirl]

Thanks Daveoc64, I think I read "messages" in the article and assumed they meant text messages instead of voicemail. That makes more sense.

[DRNewcomb]

Also, celebs aren't always very bright. I recall that someone guessed Paris Hilton's e-mail password was "tinkerbell" (her dog's name) and accessed a lot of her personal e-mail.

[KatherineYH]

Steps to protect your cell phones from being hacked
1. Adopt a proactive protection mindset
Use passwords
Don't share passwords with anyone else
2. Password protect your voicemail.
3. If you have Bluetooth enabled, make sure 'Discoverable' mode is disabled.
4. Install mobile security software if your phone supports it