Hacker breaches T-Mobile systems, reads US Secret Service email

[petron]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/01/12/hacker_penetrates_t-mobile/

By Kevin Poulsen, SecurityFocus
Published Wednesday 12th January 2005 09:47ÊGMT


A sophisticated computer hacker had access to servers at wireless giant T-Mobile for at least a year, which he used to monitor US Secret Service email, obtain customers' passwords and Social Security numbers, and download candid photos taken by Sidekick users, including Hollywood celebrities, SecurityFocus has learned.

Twenty-one year-old Nicolas Jacobsen was quietly charged with the intrusions last October, after a Secret Service informant helped investigators link him to sensitive agency documents that were circulating in underground IRC chat rooms. The informant also produced evidence that Jacobsen was behind an offer to provide T-Mobile customers' personal information to identity thieves through an Internet bulletin board, according to court records.

Jacobsen could access information on any of the Bellevue, Washington-based company's 16.3 million customers, including many customers' Social Security numbers and dates of birth, according to government filings in the case. He could also obtain voicemail PINs, and the passwords providing customers with web access to their T-Mobile email accounts. He did not have access to credit card numbers.

The case arose as part of the Secret Service's "Operation Firewall" crackdown on internet fraud rings last October, in which 19 men were indicted for trafficking in stolen identity information and documents, and stolen credit and debit card numbers. But Jacobsen was not charged with the others. Instead he faces two felony counts of computer intrusion and unauthorized impairment of a protected computer in a separate, unheralded federal case in Los Angeles, currently set for a 14 February status conference.

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Oh great, that's just what I need some hacker selling my data to some jackass Identity Thief. Goddamnit!