Hacker makes costly calls

Discussion in 'News' started by Kitkatninja, Dec 21, 2008.

  1. Kitkatninja
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    Kitkatninja aka me, myself & I Moderator

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    Hacker makes costly calls



    A local business owner is on the hook for a $52,000 phone bill after his voice-mail system was hacked and hundreds of calls were made to Bulgaria.
    Alan Davison, who owns HUB Computer Solutions, noticed something was wrong when "feature 36" -- a message unknown to him -- kept popping up on his phone.

    He called MTS and found that hundreds of calls were recently made to Bulgaria, racking up $52,321.14 in overseas long distance due Jan. 5.

    "If I have to pay that whole bill out of my own pocket, I'm looking at having to lay off one of my employees," Davison said. "It's quite obvious something was right out of whack. There were hundreds of phone calls."

    The MTS representative sent Davison an e-mail outlining how to protect his company from theft of long distance.

    See here for the rest of the article. Another system we IT professionals need to take into consideration when planning security (provided telecoms falls under IT in your organisation).

    -Ken
     
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Comments

    1. hbroomhall
      hbroomhall
      And on their home page is the statement:
      Really? Hm.

      Harry.
    2. Daniel
      Daniel
      Bulgaria?

      Couldn't the hacker have done one better and made calls to Australia?

      Gosh.
    3. flounder10
      flounder10
      As the value is in Dollars, I'm presuming that the company concerned is in America. Australia is not as far for the Americans as it is for us Brits, so it would probs be cheaper to phone Australia from the US. Bulgaria for the Americans is the equivalent of us and Australia geographically :)
    4. onoski
      onoski
      Security would always be an important aspect of any IT infrastructure, sadly this one if true is a costly realization when it goes utterly wrong.
    5. Kitkatninja
      Kitkatninja
      Lots of countries use the word dollar for their currency, the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc... The article was taken from a local newspaper in Canada.

      -Ken

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