Hacking Jack Straw
By Davey Winder in Editorial
Posted in Data Protection, phishing, Blog, Security, email, Internet on
As phishing messages go, it was never likely to be the most successful. A high ranking member of the British Government asking his friends for 3000 bucks because he had lost his wallet while abroad? I don’t think so.
Yet that is, it would appear, exactly the email that hundreds of people in the address book of former UK Home Secretary and current Justice Secretary The Right Honorable Jack Straw MP have found themselves on the receiving end of. The United States may well be the phisher kings but Nigerian scammers would seem to be doing OK in the UK.
According to the Telegraph Jack Straw has confirmed that he “started getting phone calls from various constituents asking if I was really in Nigeria needing 3,000 dollars.”
However, the Justice Secretary is quick to play down the potential national security implications of his email account being hacked. The messages appear to have been sent from his Blackburn constituency account rather than his Westminster Government one.
That said, the emails did go to Ministry of Justice officials, council bosses and Labour Party members as well as his Blackburn constituents.
Straw told the newspaper that there were no Justice Ministry security issues as this was “an issue for constituents, not the Government.”
Still, it remains a highly embarrassing incident for the man who established the National Hi-Tech Crime Unit as Home Secretary some eight years ago, with a specific remit to crackdown on Internet crime including hacking. Not forgetting that the NHTCU website itself now sells holidays, after the unit was absorbed into the Serious Organised Crime Unit but nobody thought it prudent to hang on to the NHTCU.org domain for safe-keeping.
Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, reckons that “You have to wonder if the hackers broke into Jack Straw’s mailbox in a similar fashion to the attack used on Sarah Palin’s Yahoo account last September, where cybercriminals reset passwords by guessing the answers to secret questions.”
Or maybe, like most people, he just used an easy to guess password? Whatever, I am intrigued that there has been no official comment from Jack Straw with regard to the seriousness of hackers potential having access to his email archive and all that could entail.
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[…] Hacking Jack Straw According to the Telegraph Jack Straw has confirmed that he “started getting phone calls from […]
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[…] of the country well, guess what, I smelt a rat and declined the very generous offer. I would not send Jack Straw 3000 quid because he lost his wallet. Similarly, I do not tend to respond to emails that inform me my online […]
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