A New Kind of Hack Attack

Psst! Want to buy some pictures of Paris Hilton naked? Oh, you already have some. To the glee of Internet voyeurs, someone hacked Hilton’s Sidekick II, a wireless phone/camera/PDA/Internet terminal sold by T-Mobile. The hacker then spilled its contents online, including numbers of celeb pals such as Ashlee Simpson and Eminem, along with photos of a topless Hilton cavorting with Eglantina Zingg, a VJ for MTV Latin America. The intruder didn’t hack the Sidekick; he nailed the server that stored Hilton’s personal data.

And Hilton’s not alone. Some 400 T-Mobile customers were hacked, the company admitted. Just days before Hilton’s exposure came to light, Nicholas Jacobsen, 22, pleaded guilty to computer fraud for hacking T-Mobile. He was nabbed in a government investigation of the Internet underworld. Jennifer Granick, executive director of Stanford University’s Center for Internet and Society, says the ChoicePoint scam and T-Mobile hack “show that companies don’t take seriously the need to keep our information safe.” The solution? Don’t store any truly sensitive information on a wireless device and, when possible, disable wireless features that connect users to the Net, such as Bluetooth, which can serve as a back door to hackers. Celebs aren’t the only ones at risk. Before he was caught, Jacobsen was reportedly amusing himself by reading the e-mail of another Sidekick customer: a Secret Service agent assigned to hunt down cybercrooks. –Reported by Sandra Marquez/Los Angeles