OK. Hacking your board is one thing – if you want to be a dick, go ahead, Ms. Dunn – but this is another matter entirely. Apparently a the same company that Dunn hired to dig out the mole in her own board also perused records from CNET.com and the Wall Street Journal by posing as employees of those companies. The hack, which MSNBC calls pretexting but we all know as social engineering, is usually the sole provenance of 14-year-olds who call into cable company support lines and pretend to be installation techs in the field and then ask that “them tittie programs” be added to their cable connection free of charge.
In its story, CNET said it was told by an investigator at the attorney general’s office that HP had provided a “partial list of reporters names whose phone records may have been compromised.” Cain said she didn’t know how many reporters were on that list.
News of boardroom intrigue at HP broke earlier this week in Newsweek with a story that detailed a messy spying episode inside the company. Newsweek reported that Dunn had ordered an investigation of other members of the company’s Board of Directors in an effort to find out who was giving information anonymously to reporters.
I don’t usually like to jump to knee-jerk conclusions but I think, as a whole, HP has some ‘splaining to do and a news boycott by tech journos and bloggers isn’t too far off the mark. I mean the company can’t even hire a competent ad design team.
HP investigators hacked reporters’ phone data [MSNBC]
HP Beats Down Boardroom Leaker
[CrunchGear]