Fan hacks Linkin singer cell data, threatens wife

[lapfog_1]

CNN:

ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico (AP) -- A woman is accused of using a computer at a national laboratory to hack into a cell phone company's Web site to get a number for Chester Bennington, lead singer of the Grammy-winning rock group Linkin Park.

According to an affidavit filed by the Department of Defense Inspector General, Devon Townsend, 27, obtained copies of Bennington's cell phone bill, the phone numbers he called and digital pictures taken with the phone.

link:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/Music/11/27/people.linkinpark.ap/index.html

The reason I include this story is that it's Sandia Labs... an obsessed fan working there used the facilities computers (and software) to locate and hack into this guy's (lead singer) cell phone.
Which makes me think that they have an official project at the Labs to hack into private citizens cell phones.

[Swede]

1. Bingo!

You hit the nail on thehead.

[lapfog_1]

2. Most people don't know much about our national labs

but Sandia is the one that used to be the research nexus between the military (DARPA or ARPA as it was known back then) and AT&T (back when they were THE phone company). Sandia is still home to the government phone phreaks.

[Swede]

3. It's pretty terrifying-if an obsessed fan can get that much access,

the military-industrial machine knows exactly how much gas I have in my car's gank.

[1932]

4. It's pretty easy to get people's cell phone information -- Hewlett Packard

was able to do the same thing to one of their board members without much "hacking."

I suspect this was more of a case of this woman doing this from computers at work. You only need a person's social security number to get enough information from a cell phone company to get access to a person's phone bill, and social security numbers aren't that hard to get.

[lapfog_1]

6. And how about accessing the data in the cell phone?

Which, apparently, this person did? I know that some folks hacked Paris Hilton's cell and got a phone book from it. I thought it was because she either didn't password protect it or had chosen a poor password.

There isn't any indication here about how this person hacked into the phone, but they did.

But you may be right, perhaps this was a crime of opportunity and not related the lab work... but it does give one for pause. Given the history of Sandia (it wasn't always a nuke lab, in fact, it was run by Bell Labs for years and years, until the late seventies I believe).

[1932]

7. If he'd never set up web access for his account before,

I suspect it's not that hard to get that info, because you wouldn't need the password, which is the hardest part of doing this.

[Blue_Tires]

5. scary.....