Phone hacking: the telco angle

[C R Ritson]

Not long after this became public I got a text from my phone company to say that they had noted that my voice pin was still unset/default and asking me to set it. I did (and probably can't remember it).

Chris Ritson (Computing Officer and School Safety Officer)

Room 707, Claremont Tower,        EMAIL: C.R.Ritson at ncl.ac.uk
School of Computing Science,      PHONE: +44 191 222 8175
Newcastle University,             FAX  : +44 191 222 8232
Newcastle upon Tyne, UK NE1 7RU.  WEB  : http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/




>-----Original Message-----
>From: ukcrypto-bounces at chiark.greenend.org.uk [mailto:ukcrypto-
>bounces at chiark.greenend.org.uk] On Behalf Of Roger Hayter
>Sent: 01 May 2013 19:49
>To: UK Cryptography Policy Discussion Group
>Subject: Re: Phone hacking: the telco angle
>
>
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>On 1 May 2013, at 15:43, Florian Weimer <fw at deneb.enyo.de> wrote:
>
>> I recently revisited parts of the phone hacking coverage (mainly
>> related to the activities of NotW), and it seems that this was never
>> framed as a security failure at the mobile phone operators who ran the
>> network and provisioned the attacked services.
>>
>> Is there any explanation for this?
>>
>>
>
>They told us we needed to set a PIN to make it secure.  They, probably
>correctly, calculated that more people would be annoyed by having to set
>(and forget) a PIN than would be annoyed lack of security.  So they didn't
>make it compulsory.   Probably the right commercial decision at the time.
>Would still be the right one for me.  DOI:  I have forgotten my PIN.
>
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>--
>
>Roger Hayter