They're still around and they're still a problem
socalsweeps
Pirate attack leaves phone system plundered
Company owner says TDS promised to erase the $17,000 in charges, but phone firm wants him to pay more than half
Jon Yates
What's Your Problem?
November 10, 2009
Some pirates hijack ships. The swashbucklers who attacked Mark Swimmer were more technologically savvy.
In mid-August, someone hacked into the phone system at Swimmer's Prospect Heights computer design business and began charging calls to Somalia.
Within days, the phone pirates had racked up hundreds of calls to the African nation, for an eye-popping total of $17,381.94.
Swimmer said he was first notified by a representative from AT&T who called to say the telephone company had seen unusual activity on his line. Swimmer said he called TDS Telecommunications, which provides his local and long-distance phone services, and was told the charges would be erased.
His company's office manager, Iris Lerner, said she called TDS as well. The customer service representative said the charges were obviously bogus, Lerner said.
"She said, 'I'm going to remove those charges and put an international block on your phone,' " Lerner said. "That was the only conversation I had with her."
The charges, however, were not removed, and almost two months later Swimmer began getting nervous. After receiving no commitment from TDS to erase the charges, Swimmer e-mailed What's Your Problem?
"It seems that I may be caught in the system," he said. "TDS is not going to take any responsibility, and I may be out $17,500, which I don't have."
The Problem Solver called Andrew Petersen, a spokesman for Madison, Wis.-based TDS, who said the situation was complicated.
He said Swimmer's company purchased a phone system from a third-party vendor, TelePlus Inc. of Addison. When the system was set up, the default passwords were left unchanged. They remained simple codes, such as 1234 or 0000.
Petersen said hackers go into companies' voice-mail systems, generally after hours, and begin "dialing around" to see if they can penetrate the system. Once they identify the voice-mail passwords, the hackers use a paging function to route calls through the company's phone numbers, Petersen said.
He said his company told Swimmer and Lerner several times how important it was to have "robust" password protection, but the passwords were not changed immediately.
"The equipment remained unprotected for several weeks," Petersen said. "Obviously, we at TDS are empathetic that the customer was a victim of fraud."
Petersen said TDS would erase all charges above what it cost for the company to transmit the calls overseas. The company credited Swimmer's account $7,589.24, reducing his total to $9,792.70.
"It is our strong belief that we are being more than compensatory for the damages Mr. Swimmer and his organization have incurred," Petersen said. "I would remind you that there are multiple parties involved in this dispute. We are the provider of dial-tone services. We have rendered a settlement offer to Mr. Swimmer which illustrates our empathy and sympathy to his enterprise for their misfortune."
Swimmer disagrees. He steadfastly maintains that both he and his office manager were promised that all charges would be erased.
He said TDS should have blocked his phones from making international calls the minute it discovered the phone pirates had hacked into the system.
"The whole thing kept going for a month," Swimmer said.
He said he called TelePlus Inc., which set up the phone system, but the company assumed no responsibility for the charges. The Problem Solver phoned TelePlus Monday morning, but no one returned the call.
Swimmer said he'd like TDS to further reduce the bill, preferably by at least half.
"I don't want to pay it," Swimmer said. "I really don't know what to do.
"
Copyright © 2009, Chicago Tribune
www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/chi-tue-problem-phone-pirates-11nov10,0,7687631.column
chicagotribune.com
CONSUMER WATCH
Its from Onion
Aguadilla 94-98
system and several others on the base got hacked and most calls were
to Cuba IIRC, also some African countries (do not recall which). There
were several other phone systems affected around the base (Kirtland
AFB)
>
> chicagotribune.com
>
> CONSUMER WATCH
ed
amusing that calls were going to Cuba, a US-declared enemy. This only
fuels speculation that more critical US military systems have been
compromised by more competent adversaries.
-ed
Aguadilla 94-98
On Nov 14, 5:57 pm, ed <bern...@netaxs.com> wrote:
> Not a good indication of the technical competence of USAF. And
> amusing that calls were going to Cuba, a US-declared enemy. This only
> fuels speculation that more critical US military systems have been
> compromised by more competent adversaries.
>
> -ed
>
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> - Show quoted text -