The phone-hacking scandal that brought down News of the World might have you wondering how exactly the U.K. News Corp. paper was able to get into so many phones, and whether your phone is vulnerable to such attacks.
Few mobile phones are hacking-proof, but there are things you can do to make your data more secure. We asked Massachusetts-based security expert James Atkinson of the Granite Island Group and John Hering, CEO of Lookout Mobile Security, to run through some actions that wireless customers can take to prevent their device from being compromised.
Olivia Harris/ReutersA woman speaks on her mobile phone outside the News International HQ building, in London, July 6, 2011.Set up a voice mail password. If you already have one, change it: News Corp., which also owns The Wall Street Journal and thus this blog, closed News of the World over evidence that some of its reporters broke into the mobile-phone voice mail boxes of celebrities and others in an effort to obtain stories.
One way the alleged perpetrators are believed to have accessed the voice mail according to the New York Times, was by having one person call the victim’s mobile phone and stay on the line while another person called the same phone shortly thereafter. Upon hearing the voice mail greeting, the second perpetrator would punch in the voice mail password and listen to the messages.
How did they know the password? Many of the victims are believed to have never changed the default passwords given to them by their wireless providers. A customized password could have thwarted such attempts.
Passwords also can protect wireless customers from a similar tactic called “spoofing,” Lookout Mobile Security’s Hering said. In spoofing, the hacker uses a technology that allows a phone to mimic the caller ID from the victim’s own device. If the hacker dials the victim’s number or a carrier’s remote voice access number, and the victim has not protected voice mail with a password, the hacker could gain access, he said.
When changing your voice mail password, don’t make common mistakes: Avoid using 0000, your phone or social security number, your birthday, or your mother’s maiden name. Hackers will exploit whatever information they know about you, says Granite Island Group’s Atkinson.
Limit the number of messages allowed in your voice mail: Mobile users who insist on using voice mail should keep the dedicated space small, limiting any potential damage in the event of a hack, Atkinson says.
Close your wireless mailbox and redirect callers elsewhere: A more air tight measure, says Atkinson, involves more steps—and expenses. Atkinson suggests closing your wireless mailbox completely. Instead, set up your mobile phone so that it redirects calls to another number on the fourth or fifth ring. This new number is assigned to a phone sitting on a hardwired, landline phone service set up with VOIP—made possible by an hardwired, landline Internet connection. Atkinson recommends Verizon FiOS for VoIP and Internet. Upon receiving the call, the VoIP service converts the voice mail into a text file and a .wav file and emails the data back to your mobile phone.
With this scenario, says Atkinson, the caller (or hacker) is unaware that they are being sent to another number. And the recipient gets his or her message within 30 seconds or so after the call.
Mind what you say on the mobile phone, always: Your voice mail may be secure, but your conversations can still be intercepted, Atkinson said. “People forget that a mobile phone is a radio transmitter,” he said. With as little as an Android phone and some coding savvy, he said, a would-be hacker can park on a frequency band and record all the data on that band for analysis later. It is getting to the point, he said, where talking on mobile phones is like “standing in the middle of the food court with a megaphone.”
Hering said that such hijacking is possible, but unless you are a celebrity or the president of the United States, the bad guys are more interested in stealing your phone than in eavesdropping.
So maybe the best security of all is to make sure you buy insurance to cover a stolen phone and have a way to remotely wipe the data from your device.
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The iPhone 4 has a pretty sophisticated camera for a smartphone.(Credit: James Martin/CNET) 
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