[LINK] Murdoch hacking scandal just gets worse.

Glen Turner gdt at gdt.id.au
Thu Dec 1 09:58:27 AEDT 2011


On Thu, 2011-12-01 at 09:01 +1100, Kim Holburn wrote:
>  At last someone pointing out the bleeding obvious, which
> I've pointed out on link before:  Why isn't anyone sheeting
> some of this home to the abysmal security put in place
> by the phone companies? 

Because in this case it didn't matter how good the technical security
of the phone and network was. They'd subverted the people as well.
And not just in the phone companies, but hospitals, police,
parliament, etc, etc.

And they hadn't just subverted people, they'd subverted entire
institutions (the House of Commons would lead that list). To the
point where even a prime minister could not stop their intrusions.
If you cooperated you were fair game (Church) and if you didn't
cooperate you were damned too (Miller).

Think about the resources and ambition of these people. Hiring a
ex intelligence forces operator to obtain information from the
devices used by a current intelligence operator, in an attempt
to gain the name of a government mole inside a terrorist
organisation. This is the level of threat expected from enemy
governments.

Sure, phones should be a lot more secure. But I don't think you
can argue that more secure phones would have stopped newspapers
reading people's texts and voicemail. That would have required
solid end-to-end crypto, which governments actively oppose in
telephony networks. Even with that, the papers would have probably
paid one of your nearest and dearest to use your phone.

-- 
 Glen Turner <http://www.gdt.id.au/~gdt/>




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