Security vendor hacks three politicians to prove a point

Security vendor F-Secure has successfully hacked into the devices of three politicians to demonstrate the dangers of public wi-fi.

British politicians David Davis, Mary Honeyball and Lord Strasberger each had their devices hacked by a consortium of F-Secure, testing firm Mandalorian Security Services and the Cyber Security Research Institute, the vendor announced.

All three legislators had consented to the exercise.

Conservative member of parliament Davis had his email account compromised, with the hackers leaving a saved draft of a message declaring his defection to the UK Independence Party. Davis' PayPal account was also hacked, having had the same password as his Gmail.

"It’s pretty horrifying, to be honest. What you have extracted was a very tough password, tougher than most people use. It’s certainly not 'password'," said Davis.

F-Secure stated that the strength of the password was irrelevant, as public wi-fi is insecure by nature, transmitting usernames and passwords in plain text.

House of Lords peer Lord Strasberger had his VoIP call from a hotel phone intercepted and published on the internet.

"That's very worrying… I think it proves that people need to know a lot more about [securing technology]. In the end, they have to look after themselves, because it really is down to you, no one else is going to do it," said the former Liberal Democrat.

European parliament member Mary Honeyball was sent a social engineering message that imitated Facebook requesting she log back in after a timeout. Her social media credentials were duly harvested by the hacking team.

F-Secure security advisor Sean Sullivan advised users to employ virtual private network (VPN) tools to encrypt data transmission over public wi-fi.

"People shouldn’t be afraid to use public wi-fi – it’s a fantastic service. But they must understand that there are risks and it is their responsibility to protect themselves."