The hackers who acquired nude photos of Paris Hilton from her cell phone used "social engineering" instead of technical wizardry, the Washington Post reports.

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Citing sources in the hacking world, the newspaper says that the 16-year-old got access to celebrity accounts by convincing a T-Mobile employee to give him confidential information.

The hacker was part of a group who had stumbled on security glitch in T-Mobile Sidekicks when passwords are pre-programmed. But to gain access to the phone's memory, they needed the telephone numbers.

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The teenager called a T-Mobile store in California posing as a manager and succeeded in getting the address of a password-protected Internet site used to manage T-Mobile accounts as well as the account name and password the store had been using.

The hackers decided to target Hilton because they knew she owned a Sidekick, although they also harassed actor Laurence Fishburne.

"As soon as I went into her camera and saw nudes my head went JACKPOT," the teenager told the Post.

While the teen and his friends succeeded in pulling off a high-profile stunt, they could be in legal trouble.