Phreakers take over FEMA phones – thousands lost to overseas calls
Those of you who know the term 'Phreaker' and realize what happened to FEMA, should relax, and take a pause after laughing for a few minutes. If you are unsure what this is about, Phreakers are people who study, experiment with, and are just plain curious about telecommunication systems.
They are smart, and are the reason behind many of the security systems in place today on the public telephone network.
According to the AP report, the DHS admitted that an individual, or a group of people, used a vulnerability in the newly installed FEMA Private Branch Exchange (PBX) to make about 400 calls to Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, India and Yemen, as well as other countries.
The resulting cost, $12,000 USD, is a huge price to pay for failing to act on a vulnerability report issued by the Department of Homeland Security in 2003, warning of the same sort of attack.
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Posted to VoIP Security