A Los Angeles security consulting firm that monitored the Academy Awards ceremony last Sunday announced that nearly one hundred people walking the red carpet were carrying cell phones that were vulnerable to the kind of privacy invasion that recently gained actor Paris Hilton unwanted notoriety.

Employees of the company, Flexilis, positioned themselves in the crowd of over one thousand people who were watching celebrities arrive at the Kodak Theater. One of the founders of the company, John Hering, wore a backpack in which he had placed a laptop computer with scanning software and a powerful antenna.

The Flexilis researchers said they were able to detect that fifty to one hundred of the attendees had smart cell phones whose contents could be electronically siphoned from their service providers' central computers. The contents of Ms. Hilton's phone, including other celebrities' phone numbers, wound up on the Internet.
The researchers said they were uncertain about the precise number of vulnerable phones because some phones may have been detected more than once. They did not tap into any of the cell phones that were scanned, which would have been illegal, therefore they could not identify whose phones were vulnerable.

Flexilis researchers said that the intention this stunt, which scanned the red carpet from 30 feet away, was to raise awareness of a threat to privacy that is becoming more common as advanced cellular phones carry a growing range of personal data, including passwords, Social Security numbers and credit card information.

"Celebrities, V.I.P.'s, executives and politicians are among the most vulnerable to this kind of attack, because they are frequently the first to adopt new consumer technologies," Mr. Hering said.

Mr. Hering also noted that despite extensive security measures at the Oscars, his company's surveillance activities went unnoticed. "We were only doing this passively, but it was possible that someone could have been standing right next to us doing this maliciously," he said.

John Pavlik, director of communications for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, said: "We're very confident about the ability of our security to keep our guests and performers and nominees’ safe. The problem with the privacy issue is that it is, in fact, a growing phenomenon with these smart phones and it will get to be more and more of a problem each year. This year, we tried to address it as strenuously as we could."

Flexilis specialize in short-range wireless data technology known as Bluetooth, which is intended to replace cables over short distances. Many cell phones have Bluetooth wireless capability to permit synchronizing with computers, or to connect to peripherals like wireless headsets.

Bluetooth has also become a standard technology in luxury cars, which allows them to permit easy integration with cell phones. And it is increasingly found in personal computers as a cable replacement for keyboards, mice and printers.

The Flexilis team said their concern was not with Bluetooth itself, which contains adequate security protection, but with the way the technology has been used by many manufacturers. "We're attempting to raise the level of security in the wireless world to the same standard that is now expected in the wired world," Mr. Hering said.

Mike Foley, executive director with the industry association Bluetooth Special Interest Group, said that his organization "takes security very seriously" and that "so far no security holes have been discovered in the Bluetooth specification itself."

Actors interviewed over the Oscar weekend expressed varying degrees of concern about their vulnerability.

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