Egypt Government Hacks Vodafone Network: Text Messaging Hacking

by NowPublic Staff | February 3, 2011 at 03:24 pm

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Egypt Government Hacks Vodafone Network: Regime Friendly Text Messages Sent As Vodafone Network Hacked

Vodafone says the Egyptian government hacked into its networks and sent unauthorized regime friendly text messages to millions of Egyptians.

In a statement, Vodafone confirms that “since the start of the protests,” the regime has used emergency authorities to send “messages to the people of Egypt.” Rival providers Mobinil and Etisalat are subject to the same authority. None of the messages are “scripted by any of the mobile network operators and we do not have the ability to respond to the authorities on their content.”

Vodafone Group has protested to the authorities that the current situation regarding these messages is unacceptable,” the company says. “We have made clear that all messages should be transparent and clearly attributable to the originator.”

The question is what accountability does Vodafone have in these circumstances? Words like hack, hacked are being used to describe the takeover of the Vodafone network by the Egyptian government. For example this a headline from Wired Magazine Egypt Hacked Vodafone to Send Pro-Regime Texts.

Others say Vodafone simply complied to the wishes of the Hosni Mubarak regime - that the lucrative market that Vodafone Egypt operates in often involves turning a blind eye to dictators, at least, until now.

"Under the emergency powers provisions of the Telecoms Act, the Egyptian authorities can instruct the mobile networks of Mobinil, Etisalat and Vodafone to send messages to the people of Egypt," Vodafone said in a statement on its website.

Vodafone said the authorities had done so since the start of the protests in the country, and that the messages weren't scripted by any of the operators.

The Guardian reports that the Egyptian government as a 44.7 controlling interest in Vodafone Egypt and that ultimately many technology companies should re-examine their relationships with autocratic regimes like Egypt.

But technology companies can hardly pretend they're surprised when they do business with autocratic regimes and then are unpopular when those regimes use their products to reinforce their diktat. Remember Nokia Siemens, which provided equipment that was used to monitor opposition in Iran? Or how about Cisco, whose routers have been used to build China's Great Firewall, which keeps the majority of its citizens in wilful ignorance of the opinions of the world beyond its shores?