Paris Hilton Hacked!

Enterprise Networks & Servers, Feb 2005

Friends of Paris Hilton, the celebrity hotel heiress, were less than amused when a hacker broke into her T-Mobile telephone and exposed their private numbers to the world. Because the world began calling them, and several reported hundreds of calls within a few hours.

Not only did the hackers access every phone number and e-mail address stored in her phone, they also grabbed her private notes she had tapped into it, including comments about her favorite airlines and hotels.

The intrusion into her mobile phone became apparent during the weekend of Feb. 19-20, when the private telephone numbers were posted on a South Korean-hosted Web site called illmob.org.

The site carried the entire contents of the heiress's address book, amounting to about 500 acquaintances. They were later removed.

The online Drudge Report revealed the cell phone hacking.

Visitors to the Web site found the numbers of stars from the worlds of music, cinema and sport, including Eminem, Lindsay Lohan, Christina Aguilera, Andy Roddick, Ashlee Simpson, Victoria Gotti, Vin Diesel and Anna Kournikova.

The New York Daily News reported that Miss Gotti, the reality television personality and daughter of the late crime boss John Gotti, said she couldn't take her phones off the hook.

"I didn't want to take the phones off the hook because my oldest son was out on a date," she told the New York Daily News. "This went on all night. Finally, at 5.30 a.m., I took them off the hook. This morning, I put them back on and they started ringing immediately. It's driving me insane."

The newspaper said the FBI was investigating.

This incident illustrates the warnings in IBM's security Index report.