[PLUG] The Athens Affair

["Michael C. Toren" <mct@toren.net>]

The IEEE Spectrum article that was mentioned at the last PLUG West meeting
can be found at <http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/print/5280>.  Here's a quick
excerpt:

	On 9 March 2005, a 38-year-old Greek electrical engineer named
	Costas Tsalikidis was found hanged in his Athens loft apartment,
	an apparent suicide. It would prove to be merely the first public
	news of a scandal that would roil Greece for months.

	The next day, the prime minister of Greece was told that his
	cellphone was being bugged, as were those of the mayor of Athens
	and at least 100 other high-ranking dignitaries, including an
	employee of the U.S. embassy. [See sidebar "CEOs, MPs, & a PM."]

	The victims were customers of Athens-based Vodafone-Panafon,
	generally known as Vodafone Greece, the country's largest cellular
	service provider; Tsalikidis was in charge of network planning at
	the company. A connection seemed obvious. Given the list of people
	and their positions at the time of the tapping, we can only
	imagine the sensitive political and diplomatic discussions,
	high-stakes business deals, or even marital indiscretions that may
	have been routinely overheard and, quite possibly, recorded.

	Even before Tsalikidis's death, investigators had found rogue
	software installed on the Vodafone Greece phone network by parties
	unknown. Some extraordinarily knowledgeable people either
	penetrated the network from outside or subverted it from within,
	aided by an agent or mole. In either case, the software at the
	heart of the phone system, investigators later discovered, was
	reprogrammed with a finesse and sophistication rarely seen before
	or since.

	A study of the Athens affair, surely the most bizarre and
	embarrassing scandal ever to engulf a major cellphone service
	provider, sheds considerable light on the measures networks can
	and should take to reduce their vulnerability to hackers and
	moles.

	[...]

-mct
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