This evening two men were charged by police with intercepting phone messages.
I’ve no idea at this point what’s actually happened, but as far as I can see there are a few ways that this might have happened:
* An unchanged pin used by dialling a phone and entering the number. This won’t work on my service provider but there’s another better way…
* Dialling a generic voicemail access number, entering the target phone’s number and then entering the pin. This might be a default number or a specific number.
* Social engineering. Getting pin numbers by spinning a likely tale to a phone company operator getting them to reveal a number to you. There are bound to be ways for this to work even if I don’t know what they are. That’s how people in the past have got bank records and the like.
Thinking about it all, it’s remarkably easy. Indeed your home answering machine is even easier with popular brands using default numbers. Dial in, press #, and enter the number. You’ve got the messages.
There are going to be big implications from this story.