Hacker Runs Up $15K Phone Bill At Library

[Breeze54]

Hacker Runs Up $15K Phone Bill At Library

http://www.thebostonchannel.com/news/16918714/detail.html

UPDATED: 6:34 am EDT July 18, 2008

One Call Included 30-Hour Connection To India

DUXBURY, Mass. --

A computer hacker has run up a phone bill of more than $15,000 at the Duxbury public library.

Town manager Richard MacDonald told The Patriot Ledger of Quincy that the calls last March
included one 30-hour connection to India that cost $7,000.

This week selectmen shifted $13,000 in town funds to help pay the bill. MacDonald said the
town is still looking into its obligations and may not have to pay.

The FBI is investigating.

Manny Santos, director of engineering for CranCom Inc., the library's phone company at the time,
said a hacker apparently got access to the phone system through an employees voice mail.
He said the scammer then linked a library extension to an outside number.

The library now has a new phone system.

Holy shit!! That's a lot of talking! ...

[Nickster]

1. It was probably a computer connection, a little hack-a-lacking going on.

[Breeze54]

2. It was, through voice mail.

:wow:

[Nickster]

3. Yeah, I meant using that phone connection to hook up a computer.

[Breeze54]

5. I got you ! --They must have kept quiet about it since March, to investigate,

as it happened in March. This is the first I heard about it.

We have a lot of high tech people living here. I wonder.... Hmmmmmm

[dbonds]

4. Someything fishy about that report.

Voice mail, $15k, hackers... doesn't add up.

[Breeze54]

6. What do you mean?

:shrug:

Duxbury is on the ocean? :P

[dbonds]

7. Getting into a system to a system through voice mail is first thing.

Maybe there was some bug that let them dial out to another number, unlikely but I'll give them that. A hacker could not effectively use that connection though, PBX systems have their own digital encoding which doesn't have a lot of bandwidth. To use an old style modem on that, if possible to sync a connection, would have an extremely low bandwidth. It would be unusable for almost any modern application. The next is the cost, if this was one person making one connection over a month (assuming 1 month since they would notice it over more than that). From start of billing cycle to end they would have to have a continuous connection 24/7 to somewhere that costs 34 cents a minute.

Not doubting the charges, just the hacker aspect of it, doesn't add up.

[Breeze54]

9. Maybe because they had "a one 30-hour connection to India that cost $7,000."

:shrug:

[dbonds]

12. You can call India for 5 cents a minute, that would be $4/ minute.

[tridim]

8. This sounds like a phone phreaking story from 1981.

Ahh, the good old days. :)

[itsrobert]

10. Calling India?

Maybe Dell Corp was trying to save a little on Tech Support cost?

[Breeze54]

11. LOL! -- Or Earthlink, HP, AT&T... so many....

:grr: