Paris Hilton Hacker Sentenced

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Teen gets 11 months' detention for charming, hacking data out of T-Mobile.

A Massachusetts juvenile has pleaded guilty to a January 2005 attack that ultimately exposed the cell phone address book of U.S. socialite Paris Hilton to the Internet, according to T-Mobile, the mobile phone provider whose servers were compromised in the attack.

The juvenile, who was not identified because of his age, has been sentenced to 11 months' detention, to be followed by two years of supervised release, for a series of hacking incidents and threats made over a 15-month period beginning in March 2004. He is also prohibited from using computers, cell phones, or any device capable of accessing the Internet during the period of this sentence.

Tactics: Tech and Charm

A copy of Hilton's cell phone address book was posted to the Web in February, giving millions of Internet users access to private phone numbers and e-mail addresses for celebrities such as Eminem and Anna Kournikova.

The juvenile in question was able to obtain this information by tricking T-Mobile employees into revealing sensitive information, a hacking technique called "social engineering," and by exploiting a flaw in T-Mobile's Web site, according to Peter Dobrow, a T-Mobile spokesperson. "The main issue here was social engineering," he said. "There also was a password reset function that we addressed on our end."

T-Mobile has also taken steps to prevent such social engineering attacks from succeeding in the future, Dobrow said.

The juvenile was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Rya Zobel in Boston last Thursday, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney's Office.

The juvenile had been charged with a variety of crimes, including hacking into unnamed Internet and telephone service providers and making bomb threats to schools in Massachusetts and Florida. Damages from these crimes amounted to about $1 million, the statement said.

In January 2005, the hacker gained access to the computer system of a "major telephone service provider" and posted information stored on the mobile phone of one of its subscriber, the statement said, without naming Hilton or T-Mobile.

The subscriber identified in that statement was, in fact, T-Mobile customer Paris Hilton, Dobrow said. "We're satisfied that this one individual has been brought to justice as it relates to the Paris Hilton matter," he added.

source: pcworld.com

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