In a development that was bound to happen sooner or later, federal authorities arrested two men yesterday who had allegedly hacked into a group of companies’ VoIP networks and then resold discount phone service that used those networks.
According to authorities, Edwin Pena in Miami paid a Washington state computer hacker named Robert Moore to help him illegally route phone calls through the networks of fifteen VoIP providers. Pena, posing as a telecommunications broker, allegedly sold around ten million minutes of service at low rates, pocketing around $1 million for himself, which he blew on cars, boats and real estate.
What isn’t exactly clear to me from the press reports (and perhaps this is intentional on the part of law enforcement) is how Pena and Moore did this. The New York Times report says that they “hacked into computers run by an unsuspecting investment company in Rye Brook, N.Y., commandeering its unprotected servers to re-route phone traffic through them.”
An investment company with unprotected servers? Although Moore obviously has some technical chops, this firm clearly left itself open for chicanery if it didn’t protect its servers from unauthorized access. But, I suspect (actually I know) that so many small businesses — even large ones — and, of course, individuals, are simply unaware of how easy it is for others to gain access to computers and servers in an all-IP world.
It merely takes technical know-how and willingness for outsiders to get into private places. As crazy as tapping into servers to steal VoIP service sounds, it’s just one of probably a billion ideas germinating out in the minds of unscrupulous individuals.
Cynthia Brumfield at 5:01 PM|Comments(0)
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