I’m struggling to get my head around this one. You can get a celebrity’s mobile number and presumably get through to leave a message on their voicemail. What next?

with the mailbox on my phone you can then type in a code on your phone to listen to messages. I’m guessing that this was back in the days when these things were switched on by default and the code was always the same unless you changed it.

Same as the old BT Robin answerphone used to do?

Pretty sure most mobile phone voicemail PINs are set to the phone number by default (mine is).

On O2 you can dial the mobile number and then press * to access the voicemail (so you can access your voicemail from a landline if you’ve left your mobile at home).

You’re required to enter a PIN but most people never setup or changed this from the default PIN (4 digit PIN which was the same for all O2 customers at one point) and so if you knew someones mobile number and what network they were on you could access their voicemails.

Ridiculously simple but O2 have now redesigned their Voicemail so it can no longer be done. I assume other networks have done the same.

Exactly that.

I dial your phone, get to ‘leave a voicemail’ and try various highly obscure default codes (0000, 1234 etc) to get into the admin menu. From there I can play back the messages, one “hacked” phone. It’s really not sophisticated.

Back when I had a cassette-based TAM at home, the default remote admin code was “12”. You could change it, to anything from “11” to “16”. Mm, secure.

i believe part of the trick was to call the number with one phone, and then call with a second phone which would go straight to voicemail.

Bag off with the celebrity, take them to heaven with a deft touch on their pleasure buttons and then while they’re unconcious, browse through their phone messages and pictures.

All journalists are taught how to do this, especially ones in the bike industry.

yes or the pin was 0000 because they never bothered to change it.

As above, you know the slebs number so someone in the office calls them and keeps them on the phone, trying to get an interview or something.

Meanwhile, you give them a call on the same number. It obviously* goes to voicemail. When you get “hi, you’re through to Prince Phillip, I can’t get to the phone right now…” you press *. Then it asks you to enter your PIN. No one knew about this service so no one knew to change the PIN. So you press 111 or whatever the default PIN is on your keypad then listen to/record all of the voicemails.

*’Call waiting’ means that this won’t necessarily work now, but I suppose if they switched calls to answer you you’d just say “Hi, I’m from the Sun calling about an interview….My colleague’s already speaking to you? My mistake” and not arouse any suspiscion.

If the method is so simple (as suggested above)

Why were the different newspapers involved “headhunting” the guy who is currently giving evidence, the guy who could hack the phones and get the stories.

first of all, you can’t hack something unless you look a bit geeky and behave like you’ve had a bit too much coffee, so fix that for starters.

then you start typing in passwords based on their date of birth, and by the third or fourth go, you’re “in”

separation of responsibility I assume as well? he takes the flak (for cash) they get the stories (and can say “it wasn’t them”)

Maybe he didn’t tell them how he was doing it?

He told them “I hacked into their voicemail” but didn’t tell them how easy it was?

And there’s the fact that he was willing to be part of a massive criminal conspiracy so the risk from being caught was pretty high.

From what I’ve read the “two calls” method, as well as getting into the voicemail, also (prior to call waiting) stopped a missed call appearing on the receiver’s handset, which would have happened if you called it when the celeb wasn’t able to answer but the phone was on.

If the method is so simple (as suggested above)
Why were the different newspapers involved “headhunting” the guy who is currently giving evidence, the guy who could hack the phones and get the stories.

There’s the small issue of having to know the celeb’s personal number that people leave personal messages on, and the persistence to keep hacking a lot of phones at frequent intervals until you find something juicy.

I’m guessing these celebs had very juicy interesting bits of gossip left on their voicemail then?

Hacking my voicemail would result in some very boring listening. “I’m in the pub. Where are you?”, “what do you want for tea tonight?” etc etc.

Not only that, I tend to delete voicemails after I’ve listened to them. Do celebs not do this?

I’m guessing these celebs had very juicy interesting bits of gossip left on their voicemail then?

deliberately?

If someone hacked my voicemail, they would be treated to (probably) several very boring and long-winded messages from my mother explaining what gardening she is doing, or how her dogs ate something disgusting.

You’d then know if I’d been hacked because the journos would be dying of boredom.

Mind you, if it’s e-mail you are talking about…

BREAKING NEWS: ELL TELLS PARTNER IS IN THE PUB AND WANTS TO KNOW WHAT HE WANTS FOR TEA. Sources reveal that ell tell has been seen near a pub and hasn’t told his partner what he wants for tea. Sources say his partner was heard to comment: ‘If he doesn’t get home soon then his fishfingers and beans will be in the dog’ Ell Tell was unavailable for comment.

I amazed the mobile networks came out of this squeaky clean – it was so ridiculously easy to do this that it’s not really ‘hacking’

it was so ridiculously easy to do this that it’s not really ‘hacking’

That goes for quite a lot hacking though really.
“Security through obscurity” is still painfully common.

From what I have read, it’s much more likely to have been done by “Caller ID Spoofing” which is slightly more complicated, but still not difficult really.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caller_ID_spoofing

BREAKING NEWS: ELL TELLS PARTNER IS IN THE PUB AND WANTS TO KNOW WHAT HE WANTS FOR TEA. Sources reveal that ell tell has been seen near a pub and hasn’t told his partner what he wants for tea. Sources say his partner was heard to comment: ‘If he doesn’t get home soon then his fishfingers and beans will be in the dog’ Ell Tell was unavailable for comment.

Forgot about this thread. That made me laugh 🙂

deliberately?

Well, being cynical you might argue some celebs could’ve for the exposure…

I just couldn’t get my head around the fact there would be anything of any interest left on a voicemail, but in the main I guess the real issue is more the invasion of privacy.