Report: UK tabloid hacked into voicemails

[smiths]

memory lane ...

The suicide of a Greek telecommunications expert added to the murkiness yesterday surrounding the explosive revelations that eavesdroppers listened in on Greece's entire political and military elite, including the Prime Minister, for almost a year.

The death of Kostas Tsalikides, 39, who took his own life last March, a day after the discovery of sophisticated spy software at the mobile telephone operator Vodafone, has deepened the mystery of how 100 portable phones, belonging to senior officials, were tapped in the run-up to the Athens Olympic Games. By hanging himself from his loft, the British-trained technician may have taken the secrets of Greece's Watergate to his grave.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/feb/05/greece

[seemslikeadream]

News International faces threats over hacked emails
News International faces threats from hackers that they will publish emails taken from servers at The Sun and The News of the World during a cyber attack last night.

By Christopher Williams, Technology Correspondent

11:38AM BST 19 Jul 2011

The threats came after a breach of the embattled newspaper group’s computer network by LulzSec, a hacking group previously known for its attacks on the CIA and SOCA websites, among others.

Sabu, a pseudonymous hacker linked to LulzSec and Anonymous, an allied and more overtly political “hacktivist” group, said on his Twitter account that The Sun and The News of the World had been “owned”.

In hacker jargon “owned” means attackers have full control over target systems.

“We're sitting on their emails,” Sabu said. “Press release tomorrow [Tuesday].”

LulzSec supporters also tweeted a series of email addresses and mobile phone numbers apparently taken from News International servers and encouraged others to call them. The data included an email address and password at The Sun for Rebekah Wade (now Brooks), who resigned as News International chief executive on Friday.

Indeed, much of the information published appeared to be out of date. It included contact details at The Sun for Pete Picton, a former online editor who last year went to work for Mr Murdoch’s iPad-only publication, The Daily, in New York.

Another individual whose details were exposed by LulzSec supporters, Chris Hampartsoumian , an IT worker, responded on Twitter that “I don't work for The Sun or News International or any News Corp company”.

“Thank you for all the kind phone calls and messages,” he said sarcastically.

Claims that LulzSec had accessed News International emails emerged after the group attacked The Sun’s website. It used its control of servers to redirect visitors to the home page to a spoof news story that claimed Rupert Murdoch had taken a fatal dose of palladium “before stumbling into his famous topiary garden late last night”.

Details of how the security breach occurred the were sketchy this morning, and a News International spokesman declined to provide details, but a picture was beginning to emerge.

Visitors to The Sun websites were redirected using a line of Javascript, a type of software code often used on websites, inserted into its “breaking news” ticker.

The spoof news story was meanwhile posted on www.new-times.co.uk, a defunct website. It appeared to use a page from The Sun’s genuine website as a template, with material dating from 14 July, prompting speculation LulzSec may have first breached the network last week.

As news of the attack spread overnight, it appears News International’s IT staff shut down its websites, including that of The Times. At about midnight LulzSec said it was battling with The Sun website’s administrators, and briefly redirected visitors again, this time to its Twitter account.

Both The Sun and The Times websites were back online this morning. A spokesman said the firm was aware of the attack on its network and declined to comment further.

At the end of June, after a high-profile spree of cyber attacks and arrests, LulzSec claimed it would disband. But last night the group’s spokesman, thought to be a hacker who goes by the name Topiary, said: “I know we quit, but we couldn't sit by with our wine watching this walnut-faced Murdoch clowning around.”

[wintler2]

The Lulzsec-Sun hack is great, hopefully Murdoch will commit perjury today and we'll have the evidence to prove it tomorrow.

I hope the House of Commons questioners have read..
Geoffrey Robertson - 9 Questions for Rupert and and Steven Mayne's How to cross examine RM.

[Searcher08]

Photo from Rebbekakaka Brookes discussions with The Met emerges:

[MacCruiskeen]

Sean Hoare knew how destructive the News of the World could be

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/ju ... intcmp=239

The courageous whistleblower who claimed Andy Coulson knew about phone hacking had a powerful motive for speaking out


Nick Davies
guardian.co.uk, Monday 18 July 2011 18.46 BST


At a time when the reputation of News of the World journalists is at rock bottom, it needs to be said that the paper's former showbusiness correspondent Sean Hoare, who died on Monday, was a lovely man.

In the saga of the phone-hacking scandal, he distinguished himself by being the first former NoW journalist to come out on the record, telling the New York Times last year that his former friend and editor, Andy Coulson, had actively encouraged him to hack into voicemail.

That took courage. But he had a particularly powerful motive for speaking. He knew how destructive the News of the World could be, not just for the targets of its exposés, but also for the ordinary journalists who worked there, who got caught up in its remorseless drive for headlines.

Explaining why he had spoken out, he told me: "I want to right a wrong, lift the lid on it, the whole culture. I know, we all know, that the hacking and other stuff is endemic. Because there is so much intimidation. In the newsroom, you have people being fired, breaking down in tears, hitting the bottle."

He knew this very well, because he was himself a victim of the News of the World. As a showbusiness reporter, he had lived what he was happy to call a privileged life. But the reality had ruined his physical health: "I was paid to go out and take drugs with rock stars – get drunk with them, take pills with them, take cocaine with them. It was so competitive. You are going to go beyond the call of duty. You are going to do things that no sane man would do. You're in a machine."

While it was happening, he loved it. He came from a working-class background of solid Arsenal supporters, always voted Labour, defined himself specifically as a "clause IV" socialist who still believed in public ownership of the means of production. But, working as a reporter, he suddenly found himself up to his elbows in drugs and delirium.

He rapidly arrived at the Sun's Bizarre column, then run by Coulson. He recalled: "There was a system on the Sun. We broke good stories. I had a good relationship with Andy. He would let me do what I wanted as long as I brought in a story. The brief was, 'I don't give a fuck'."

He was a born reporter. He could always find stories. And, unlike some of his nastier tabloid colleagues, he did not play the bully with his sources. He was naturally a warm, kind man, who could light up a lamp-post with his talk. From Bizarre, he moved to the Sunday People, under Neil Wallis, and then to the News of the World, where Andy Coulson had become deputy editor. And, persistently, he did as he was told and went out on the road with rock stars, befriending them, bingeing with them, pausing only to file his copy.

He made no secret of his massive ingestion of drugs. He told me how he used to start the day with "a rock star's breakfast" – a line of cocaine and a Jack Daniels – usually in the company of a journalist who now occupies a senior position at the Sun. He reckoned he was using three grammes of cocaine a day, spending about £1,000 a week. Plus endless alcohol. Looking back, he could see it had done him enormous damage. But at the time, as he recalled, most of his colleagues were doing it, too.

"Everyone got overconfident. We thought we could do coke, go to Brown's, sit in the Red Room with Paula Yates and Michael Hutchence. Everyone got a bit carried away."

It must have scared the rest of Fleet Street when he started talking – he had bought, sold and snorted cocaine with some of the most powerful names in tabloid journalism. One retains a senior position on the Daily Mirror. "I last saw him in Little Havana," he recalled, "at three in the morning, on his hands and knees. He had lost his cocaine wrap. I said to him, 'This is not really the behaviour we expect of a senior journalist from a great Labour paper.' He said, 'Have you got any fucking drugs?'"

And the voicemail hacking was all part of the great game. The idea that it was a secret, or the work of some "rogue reporter", had him rocking in his chair: "Everyone was doing it. Everybody got a bit carried away with this power that they had. No one came close to catching us." He would hack messages and delete them so the competition could not hear them, or hack messages and swap them with mates on other papers.

In the end, his body would not take it any more. He said he started to have fits, that his liver was in such a terrible state that a doctor told him he must be dead. And, as his health collapsed, he was sacked by the News of the World – by his old friend Coulson.

When he spoke out about the voicemail hacking, some Conservative MPs were quick to smear him, spreading tales of his drug use as though that meant he was dishonest. He was genuinely offended by the lies being told by News International and always willing to help me and other reporters who were trying to expose the truth. He was equally offended when Scotland Yard's former assistant commissioner, John Yates, assigned officers to interview him, not as a witness but as a suspect. They told him anything he said could be used against him, and, to his credit, he refused to have anything to do with them.

His health never recovered. He liked to say that he had stopped drinking, but he would treat himself to some red wine. He liked to say he didn't smoke any more, but he would stop for a cigarette on his way home. For better and worse, he was a Fleet Street man.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/ju ... intcmp=239

[seemslikeadream]

don't drink the water

come out come out there's no use in hiding


there's blood in the water

[seemslikeadream]

no opening statement for you Ruppie

[Searcher08]

James Murdoch's statements are on-going and relevant to matters which are ongoing and in the fullness of time will reveal that the investigations of transparency uh facts of what happened eh moving forward in the uh uh uh uh no evidence that Im aware of uh uh uh assertions and nonetheless
<BIG PINOCCHIO NOSE COMING THROUGH MY SCREEN!!!!>

[Searcher08]

Watching Rupert is like watching The Hindenburg go down in agonising slow motion.

[seemslikeadream]

Watching Rupert is like watching The Hindenburg go down in agonising slow motion.

[Searcher08]

Watching Rupert is like watching The Hindenburg go down in agonising slow motion.

I never thought I'd feel sorry for Rupert Murdoch.
He is coming across as utterly out of touch, utterly out of command, verging on senility. James is a Gordon Gekko, whose language is pure corporatist shite.

[RocketMan]

Wow... Rupert is REALLY being laid low. No coming out of this one for him.

[wintler2]

I never thought I'd feel sorry for Rupert Murdoch.
He is coming across as utterly out of touch, utterly out of command, verging on senility. ..

Which is pretty common strategy - "i don't remember" is easier to say than "i'm not going to answer that question".

Bible burns where it touches him, so Murdoch will be sworn in on old VCR of Crocodile Dundee, the holy book of his people.

lol

[gnosticheresy_2]

I can hardly watch. Epic stuff.

[seemslikeadream]

"we are working closely with the police"