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Murdoch Papers Embroiled In Hacking Scandal

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NEAL CONAN, host: This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. A 13-year-old murder victim, senior investigators at Scotland Yard, the families of terror bomb victims and soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, former Prime Minister Gordon Brown: The hacking scandal that closed the doors of the British tabloid News of the World deepens, enveloping even more news international papers owned by Rupert Murdoch, who of course has extensive media holdings in this country and Australia, as well.

An investigation turned up as many as 5,000 landline numbers and 4,000 mobile phones that may have been hacked. So as Gordon Brown asked the BBC, if the prime minister can get hacked, what about ordinary citizens?

Later this hour, presidential letters of condolence and suicide in the military, but first, has your voicemail or cell phone been hacked? And if you're an investigator, have you ever hacked somebody's phone? Give us a call, 800-989-8255. Email us, talk@npr.org. You can also join the conversation on our website. Go to npr.org. Click on TALK OF THE NATION.

In a few minutes, Roger Cohen's defense of Rupert Murdoch, but we begin with mobile security expert John Hering. He joins us from our bureau in New York. Nice to have you with us today.

JOHN HERING: Thank you for having me.

CONAN: And we're all using this term phone hacking as if we know what it is and how to do it. What does it mean? What actually happened here?

HERING: Well, I think what we're seeing is that people are starting to realize that it's easier to hack than it ever has been before with respect to mobile devices. And data on mobile devices is essentially becoming digital currency.

Now, in this case, voicemail was the key target, and what we've seen when voicemail systems are targeted is it's usually an attack on the network versus the device itself. And what we're seeing is essentially spoofing of the identity of a user to trick the system into thinking it is the actual owner of the voicemail account, which allows the attacker to then bring the voicemail data itself into their possession.

CONAN: So to start with that, you're going to need the phone number.

HERING: That's correct.

CONAN: And where do you get that?

HERING: So it would depend. I mean, as you might imagine, phone numbers can be accessed in a number of different ways, through Internet queries or searches or through targeted espionage, if you will.

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