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White House Pager Info and Encryption
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MEDIA ADVISORY
September 16, 1997
HACKERS EXPOSE VULNERABILITY IN WHITE HOUSE SECURITY
New York - A hacker in New York today unveiled a glaring flaw in the way the
White House conducts security for the President and the First Family. The
hacker, an organizer with the Hackers On Planet Earth (HOPE) conference,
released a transcript of pager messages that the President's entourage uses
to report his location during the day.
The pager messages were intercepted with a commonly available pager
interception program on April 27, 1997 during a presidential visit to
Philadelphia (see URL below), show the Chief Executive's movements and
messages as he travels to the Convention Center to deliver a keynote speech,
alongside former Presidents Carter, Ford, and Bush. The messages detail,
step by step, the President's movements along the route to the stadium and
include messages from the press and daughter Chelsea Clinton awaiting him at
the White House switchboard.
"We are publicizing this flaw in the hopes that it will finally be fixed,"
said Pamela Finkel, one of the organizers of the HOPE conference and a lead
spokesperson for the group. "It's an excellent example of why we need
encryption to protect sensitive information."
The technique for capturing pager messages is not new, and was demonstrated
at the first HOPE conference in 1994. "Throughout the conference, one person
left a computer running the easily obtained scanning software, sampling
pages as they were being delivered to pagers," she said.
"I hope that this demonstration causes encryption to be added to the pager
network," said Finkel. "This incident shows that the President's policy on
encryption is so poorly crafted that it could have even compromised his own
personal security."
Pamela Finkel can be reached via e-mail at [email protected]. The HOPE
conference is sponsored by 2600, a magazine devoted to issues of
telecommunications and security.
Anyhow, the press release is at
http://www.inch.com/~esoteric/pam_suggestion/formal.html
The transcript of the pager messages (complete with basketball
scores for the Pres, messages to call wifey, two phone calls from Chelsea
--who got put on hold, staff romances, a Secret Service scare, etc.) is at
http://www.inch.com/~esoteric/pam_suggestion/output.html
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