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Hacker Resells VOIP For Profit
uncleO writes "The New York Times tells the story of today's arrest of Edwin Andres Pena, 23, who 'hacked into computers run by an unsuspecting investment company in Rye Brook, N.Y., commandeered its unprotected servers, and re-routed his phone traffic through them,' then 'used more than $1 million he received from his customers to go on a spending spree, buying real estate in south Florida, a 40-foot Sea Ray Mercruiser motor boat, and luxury cars including a BMW and a Cadillac Escalade.'"
I wonder if moving the money offshore would have been more obvious. These days moving large sums of money around is monitored very closely due to terrorism concerns. Unless you know what you're doing, the government is going to be asking some questions.
TFA says that his operation cost the real VOIP guys about $300,000. He received $1,000,000 in revenue. If he had just done the same thing, but legitimately, there would have been $600,000 profit. If he had only does things the right way....
Crime can pay--for a short while. But real innovation and hard work can *really* pay, and you don't have to be looking over your back the whole time.
The shitty thing is, you have to pay for minutes you were ripped off. It's one of the few businesses that you can have stolen more than you have. If I have a warehouse ripped off, I am only out the equipment in that warehouse. With tollfraud, I can be out 300,000 dollars more than my whole business is worth.
...)
Actually, you can lose more than you're worth whenever you buy something on credit -- this isn't unique to VOIP at all. Monthly billing, essentially, lets you buy minutes on credit until you have to repay your debt at the end of the month. Suppose you ran a retail store and bought your inventory on credit, expecting to pay for it with the revenue from selling the inventory. If your store gets robbed, you're in the same boat -- you owe money that you don't have. (Or suppose you run a restaurant, and your fridge breaks down, spoiling all the food that you bought on credit
The problem is obviously solved if you already own all your inventory, in which case you can only lose what you've already paid for. With VOIP, the same would be true if you pre-paid for your minutes.
Cheers,
IT
Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
Majority of the comments here tells what-he-should-have-done-to-not=get-caught. He is a cheat, he got caught. Serves him right. And with the amount he would have siphoned off, there will be enogh lawyers with snake oil to let him out. I do not think he need any sympathies and advice from /. crowd