6. Six-year-old girl hacks Parliament

Posted on 17 Jun 2008 at 10:35

Gaffe rating: 203

Given the current security climate, you'd have thought the Houses of Parliament would be among the most secure buildings in the world. Visitors attending working group committees with MPs need to submit personal information in advance, passes have to be issued, airport-style X-ray machines perform body searches, a small army of armed police are on patrol and the revolving doors are weird capsule affairs that prevent anyone from storming either in or out. So just how did a six-year-old girl manage to hack a computer in the offices of Anne Milton, MP for Guildford, back in March 2007?

Easy. The BBC challenged the MP to let its reporter remain unattended in her office, with her computer, for just 60 seconds as part of an investigation into Commons security. She agreed, no doubt comforted by the fact the reporter was a six-year-old girl. Unfortunately, she was a six-year-old girl with a hardware keylogger that was installed and ready to grab passwords and confidential documents within 20 seconds.

The double whammy here was failing to appreciate how small and simple to conceal, install and remove a keylogger device is, along with that typical security mistake of focusing on the big issues and overlooking the fine detail. Trust nobody, search everybody would be a good mantra under such circumstances.

Next: 5. When spear phishers strike

The 10 worst security gaffes

Author: Davey Winder