Mysteries of the Las Vegas Telecom System

Reverend Raven writes "This is from Security Focus and deals with how some people believe a group of uber-hackers controls the Vegas telecom system. Interesting read, indeed." A follow-up to this old story. The case seems to be still winding its way through the bureaucracy.

Comments

No - the switch has been hacked.

[Innominate Recreant]

I write telephony software. It's not the hacking of hotel telephone exchanges - it's the hacking of the swtiches at the telco. When you make a telephone call, the telco not only sends the ANI (caller id - phone number) it sends infodigits - a two-digit number identifying the type of phone from which you are calling - a residential phone, a hotel, payphone, prison, etc. It's very easy to program a switch to reroute calls to a particular DNIS based on infodigits so that if someone at a payphone calls 800-555-1234 the call goes through, but if someone from a hotel calls the same DNIS, it gets routed to a different DNIS, or goes to reorder. It's equally easy to create a conference on the switch, allowing a third party to "listen in" to call - explaining the appearance of one his competitor's "dancers" at a customer's hotel room.

This is what the plaintiff in the story is alleging - that Sprint's switches are being reprogrammed by uberhackers in the employ of the Mob or some other competing organizations.