Meet Adam Laurie, one of the UK’s top good-guy hackers

He can use a heart-rate monitor to unlock your car – but don’t worry, he’s on our side, writes Steve Boggan

A ‘white hat’ hacker is a force for good – albeit with some alarming skills (Getty/iStock)

Once, when I had just arrived at the home of hacker Adam Laurie, he astonished me by using a runner’s heart-rate monitor to unlock my car. On another occasion, bored in a hotel room, he figured out a way to use the TV’s pay-on-demand system to access the hotel’s computer, putting him in control of bookings, room service and customer accounts.

Then there was the time in the Central Lobby of the Palace of Westminster when he demonstrated how the messages, contacts and photographs on the phone of Norman Lamont, former chancellor of the exchequer, could have been stolen as the politician strolled by.

Next – and arguably his coup de grâce – Laurie went on to prove that the microchip in the Home Office’s new national identity card – which was supposed to be the most secure form of ID ever created – could be hacked, cloned and altered even though a rumoured £5bn had been spent on making it impregnable. That was in 2009; the card, which had been a great source of controversy, was quietly scrapped a few months later.