Harper Reed's Blog

Harper Reed's Blog

Musing from a normal person doing normal things

22 Feb 2005

Paris hilton.

Please note: This post was written some time ago (19 years ago). My perspectives, knowledge, and opinions may have evolved significantly since then. While the content might still offer valuable insights, I encourage readers to consider it in the context of its publication date.

So as everyone knows - paris hilton's phonebook was "hacked." it seems to me that it was gained through social engineering. and that social engineering was nothing more than someone calling up paris and asking for her tmobile password. probably something along the lines of:

hacker: Hi. I am operator #123 from T-Mobile. There has been a service interuption and I need to verify your account ID and Password to restore your acconut.
Paris: Ok. my ID is parisrulez!! and my password is ilovearms.
hacker: thanks

I don't think it was any more complex than that. I also don't think that paris is a sucker to have fallen for it. I mean - I may have fallen for it. people can get what they want by seeming confident. what was she going to do? call tmobile and make sure that there was a service interuption(or whatever story they used)? no. especially when you can spoof caller id, and you can spoof sms - it would be hard to ensure that people are really who they say they are.