Skip to Content

Paris Hilton’s Sidekick hack solved by ‘WaPo’ / Jossip



Thu / 19 May 2005
Paris Hilton’s Sidekick hack solved by ‘WaPo’

The folks at the Washington Post sure are using their investigative journalism resources wisely. Instead of exposing senators taking kickbacks or anti-gay congressmen sleeping with their male aides, WaPo has solved the story behind Paris Hilton‘s hacked Sidekick. And it all went down in the unsexiest of manners.

Rather than some 31337 4@x0r (that’s “eleet hacker” for all ya’ll non-geeks) tricks, hackers gained access to Paris’ account with good old social engineering by phone.

Like when you’re trying to get Details mag’s Daniel Peres on the phone to pitch him a story on mandals but his assistant insists he’s out of the office and would you like to leave a message? so you lie and say his mother was in a car accident and you can only reveal the sensitive details like what hospital she’s at to Daniel himself? Yes, exactly like that.

In this case, the hacker group played pretend and phoned a T-Mobile store, connived them into giving up a username and password to access the “secure, employees-only” intranet and bandied about looking up celebrity names from there (Laurence Fishburne was among them, who responded to the prank calls with “You’re illegaly calling me!”). At that point it was gravy accessing Paris’ account, locking her out of her own phone and downloading her phonebook and photos.

We’re so motivated by the Post‘s vigorous journalism that we’re going to launch our own investigation into how Fred Durst‘s sex tape surfaced. Ready, Set, Go: He leaked it himself. Woot, solved!

Next time Paris’ sidekick gets hacked, Kimberly Stewart is gonna feel ravaged.

Jossip. The Celebrity + Media + Manhattan blog.

Tips, Feedback & Press

tattle@jossip.com
Anonymous? You betcha!

Queerty. The gay blog

Recent Headlines

The Golden Globes are live blogged and in color
Jiblets: Courtney Love wants Vanity Fair to pay attention to her drug problems, too
Jon Friedman gets too mainstream for Jossip
Project Runway: First rule of winning: Don’t piss off the judge

Subscribe & Syndicate




Ego Massage
“My homepage” [Paula Froelich, Page Six]
“Shovels snark for a living” [Adam Penenberg, Wired.com]
“Every editor should be reading Jossip” [Atoosa Rubenstein, Seventeen]
“Damn you!” [Campbell Robertson, NYT]
“Splashed all over the Internet like so many numbers on a bathroom wall” [Ben Widdicombe, NYDN]
“Sometimes I wish you were not writing about me!” [Fabian Basabe]
“Covering what’s going on” [Jessica Coen, Gawker]
“Trashing me” [Anna Anisimova]
“The most ruthlessly discriminating man in media” [Nick Denton]
“That’s some good shit” [Andrew Krucoff]
“Looking better than ever” [Lockhart Steele]
“Sells his soul” [Blogebrity]
“Celebrities hate him” [Celebrity Scum]
“Unique use of the English language” [Steve Hall, Adrants]
“A fellow weblog that I love” [Miu Von Furstenberg, A Socialite’s Life]
“My latest main squeeze” [Dave Feldman]
“Somebody sure is in the know” [VividBlurry]
“No buzz” [Uncle Grambo, Whatevs]


Daily Dose

Adrants
ArtsJournal
Black Table
Curbed
DataLounge
Defamer
Fashion Week Daily
FishbowlNY
Folio:
Gawker
Gothamist
Howard Kurtz
I Want Media
Just Jared
L.A. Observed
Mediabistro
MediaPost
Off The Record
PerezHilton.com
Popbytes
Queer Day
Queerty
Radar
Reality Blurred
Rex Hammock
Romenesko
A Socialite’s Life
Talk Entertainment
The Transom
TVNewser