NOTW Phone Hacking Inquiry Interrupted by Virus

During the Leverson Inquiry at the High Court of London, David Sherborne, the representative of the victims whose phones were hacked using the now infamous NOTW hacking phone, asked for a time-out after noticing that a trojan was detected on his computer.

Graham Cluley reveals there is no clear indication whether the virus was a sabotage attempt or Sherbone simply fell victim to a regular trojan that targets millions of users every day.

“Conspiracy theorists might speculate that the most likely people behind a malware attack on a barrister representing victims of newspaper-endorsed voicemail hacking might be the newspapers themselves - especially as claims have been made in the past about the use of Trojan horses,” Cluley said.

“However, chances are that Sherborne was not specifically targeted - and just fell victim (as many thousands of computer users do every day) to a regular attack by a malicious Trojan horse.”

Sherborne panicked, especially since he knew there were tons of sensitive data on his computer.

“Mr Sherborne has interrupted the hearing to say he has received an alert to say there is a 'trojan horse' computer virus on his intranet in the RCJ,” the Telegraph reported.

“He tells Lord Justice Leverson he has a large amount of confidential information on his computer and asks permission to rise to sort the problem out.”

The same report claims that people started laughing after he started saying that the threat is in big red letters just like the font used by News of the World back in the day.

The investigations in this case are far from being over so who knows how many trojans and other threats will turn up during the inquiry. In such an important case, even the most harmless little virus can easily yell sabotage.