Phreaker calls buddies overseas on U.S. government dime

Someone broke into a U.S. Homeland Security Department phone system and made 400 calls to the Middle East and Asia, racking up $12,000 in long-distance charges, The Associated Press reported.

The phone phreaker got into the voice mail system of the Federal Emergency Management Agency last weekend and had free calling to places like Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen for at least two days before someone at Sprint noticed, according to FEMA spokesman Tom Olshanski.

It appears that a hole was left open by a contractor during an upgrade of the voice mail system, but further details were not released.

[MadLyb]

This isn't really news. It is a very common event, but most Corporations never admit it publicly.

[telestarnext]

Very true. I can't even remember how many default passwords i Have found still live. Less the other holes.

[n3td3v]

Phreaker calls buddies overseas on U.S. government dime

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phreaker

???

[08Rabbit]

lol most people wouldn't get it.

[n3td3v]

She changed it to "Phreaker". lol

[seanwoods1]

Who cares he left something for his buddies? If he wanted to he could have done a lot of damage while he had accessed their system. Sometimes you need to choose your fights wisely.

just fix the problem and move on. the government security was caught with their pants down again. hackers should be a learning experience. you can't stop progress in security by sending hackers to jail--there will always be more. the only way to make yourself more secure is to use each incident as a lesson learned to help close security holes so it doesn't happen again.

[HlLLARY CLITON]

and we depend on the govt to protect us

[AMXP]

I saw Sprint and now I am not surprised....

[Solaris_User]

Saying "buddies" is probably a mis-truth. More likely this person was trying to embarrass DHS by calling terrorists nations.

Ironically in 2003 DHS warned about this exact thing.

Incompetence = Government.. but maybe they need a little more money.. lol

[TV James]

@AMXP - darn it, you beat me to the punch. Exactly what I was going to say.

[Travis Ernst]

And this is NEW? Same stuff, different day. It's just not happening as much as it did before when we had the colored boxes and prior to MaBell's breakup. Those days caused "tone detectors" to be used. This article doesn't even account for the phone ABUSE that goes on at offices and government.

[paulej]

I just wonder how hard this person had to work at placing long-distance calls. Based on what is written, it sounds like the person did nothing more than call the voicemail system and was offered a chance to dial an extension or something... which could be to anywhere.

But here's the bigger question: why in the world is the US Government paying insane prices for calling overseas? Just how many phone calls could this person possibly make in a 2-day period of time? With many VoIP service providers 2 days worth of calls, 24 hours per day, would be 24 hours * 60 minutes * 2 days * 0.30 cost/min = $864. Vonage charges less than this price, by the way, for some of those places. Let's consider the most expensive one on Vonage's list: $1.25 to Afghanistan. That's still $3600. Our find government paid an average of $4.16/min! OK, they did say "at least two days", but I would assume that does not two weeks.

Is our government both incompetent and helpless? Can they not negotiate better rates? Good grief.

[Solaris_User]

They don't have to negotiate better rates.. its not their money. Government ALWAYS overpays for stuff.. ALWAYS.

[UITD]

Dont worry. The messiah OBAMA will save us all. Change is what we need. We have to have hope and have to hope for change. Yea, thats it.

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