Telco pulls plug on teen hacker

One and a half million cellphone users are being warned to disable the optional voicemail PIN feature on their phones after a teenage hacker tapped into messages belonging to police, defence staff and politicians.

Auckland Mayor Dick Hubbard, police communications staff and internal affairs, and CIB officers are some of those who have fallen victim to the hacker.

The principle the hacker used applies to landlines as well as cellphones so Telecom is contacting its 1.5 million cellphone and 1.4 million landline customers with urgent security advice.

Telecom spokesman John Goulter said the company was alerted to the security breach this week by staff from the Computerworld newspaper.

Editor Matthew Cooney said during an interview for an unrelated story the issuing of hacking arose and the paper was later provided with proof that the teenager could access other people's voice messages.

He provided the paper with a list of cellphone and voice message PIN numbers for several people, including Mr Hubbard and an adviser to Progressive Party leader Jim Anderton.

Mr Goulter said this was the first instance Telecom was aware of someone tapping into customers' messages in New Zealand and the company was seeking international advice.

"We have started talking to other phone companies around the world and so far [what has happened] seems to be very rare."

Telecom is advising its customers to protect themselves in two ways. The first is by installing a PIN number on their phones if they haven't already.

The second, and most important, is ensuring that the PIN is manually entered each time messages are checked, rather than having it stored in the phone memory.

Anyone who suspects their phone had been tapped into is also being encouraged to change their PIN.

A spokeswoman for Mr Hubbard said the mayor did not have a PIN on his phone but that was to change following this week's incident.

The mayoral office would not be investigating the matter and the spokeswoman was unable to comment on what kind of information was on the phone at the time the hacker accessed the voice message.

Other hacker victims included police communications advisers Noreen Hegarty and Jayson Rhodes.

Ms Hegarty said she did not know what was accessed but it was "nothing of national security level".

Police spokesman Jon Neilson said staff were being told how to secure their voice messages.

PROTECTING YOURSELF

1. Call the voice mailbox on 083210 or hold down 1 on your mobile phone.

2. Press 3 to change your personal options.

3. Press 2 to change PIN. The voice prompt will tell you your current PIN.

4. If happy with the current PIN go onto the next step.

5. Press 3 to set up Optional PIN.

6. If optional PIN is ON the mailbox will NOT ask for a PIN when you dial from your own phone.

7. Press 1 to turn Optional PIN OFF.

8. The voice prompt will repeat the PIN number. You will now be asked for your PIN each time you dial in to check your messages.