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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'm never gonna get used to VOIP. Caffineated bacon? Baconated grapefruit? ADMIRAL Crunch?
Here's reference for you young whipper snappers
If thou see a fair woman pay court to her, for thus thou wilt obtain love
in this story is that he went and bought a Cadillac...
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.
WHO CARES...... VOIP is the devil, I had one but then I had an anureism in my left temporal lobe that exploded and blew out my eyeball causing me to stumble and fall down some stairs and cracked open my leg and got gangrene and then had ot have it amputated below the knee. So now I am known as the anti-VOIP pirate. when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro - figure it out
Why is it that most thieves have no taste? The BMW is okay, but most of that is tacky sh*t you could win on The Price is Right.
Schwab
Elitist Scum
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
...allowed one phone call when arrested!!
AT&ROFLMAO
If he was in the Government, he would have gotten a medal of freedom, and a nice no-bid contract after this was done.
---
When you come to a fork in the road, take it! --Yogi Berra--
When will they learn? If you ever find a get rich quick scheme that ACTUALLY WORKS and makes you millions you should spend it slowly. Don't go for the Escalade and McLaren. Don't buy a home on the coast of Florida. Do learn about banks in Switzerland.
Funnypics
I used to work in the VoIP business writing software a few years ago. There's A LOT of illegal activity that goes on. Much more than you think. Espically in wholesale. These guys do this stuff all the time. I guess the real story is that it happened in the US. Mostly it happens outside of the US. But trust me, it happens all the 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.
It's bound to happen. A lot of these guys just buy a cheap-o softswitch and throw it in a noc. Some of them do their billing in MS Access.
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
Disconnect! Disconnect! The Gig is up!
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.
in this little tale is man by the name of Robert Moore(RTFA), who did all the hacking.
But in order to do this, new accounts with the SIP registrar servers had to be created, so how the hell did those go undetected? Also, there seems to be a misunderstanding about the Invesment company. In the end you HAVE to have real IPs even if you use proxy servers because that's how you communicate.
I dont think it's possible to use port forwarding with current protocols. Or am I wrong?
Well.. I, for one, never really bought into the myth that kids today are unmotivated. It is good to see someone with ambition and drive. I am, like many others, sadly noting the use he put his money to.
Dude, its not Swiss bank accounts or the Cayman Islands. Its Vegas Baby.. Alcohol, women, drugs, gambling... In my day, we did not give a damn about the future as we knew we could always steal more. They can take your possessions away, but never your memories. In my day, we created companies that sold nothing and listed money invested by venture capitalists as "sales" and gave ourselves huge bonuses.. This plan would have really worked, if you have followed the 1990's model and not actually provided any services...
On the serious side tho.. Doesn't this raise some fundamental questions about VOIP security? If I am reading this correctly, they did not hack the VOIP software itself, but a computer on which they resided, then ran the software normally. That opens a lot of systems worldwide to this sort of scheme.
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
Except that you cant get numbered swiss bank accounts anymore.
Bottles.
First you set up an offshore legal entity. It should raise the invoices and receive the payments. There should be no visible link between the entity and you and the entity should not be registered/domiciled in a country of increased risk for money laundering.
Forget Swiss accounts, they are passe and the numbered accounts (anonymous) are no more. Useful for avoiding a bit of income tax but that is about it. Even then, if you are high-profile (i.e., involved in illegal activities), the Swiss won't want your money.
Even a lesser known friend, Austria is trying to phase out the bearer savings-accounts, i.e., he who has the savings-book has account access, without giving a name.
Lichtenstein is slightly more positive but even there beneficiaries aren't totally anonymous. The Caribbean is definitely out because even if you find a neutral risk country there, the transactions are watched closely because of drugs. Forget shell-banks, they aren't considered acceptable at all.
Although the money involved with financing 9/11 was minuscule, this has been used as an excuse to force through anti-money-laundering legislation so large cash transactions and international payments are monitored closely. If you are in the US or the UK, it is quite hard now but not totally impossible. The easiest is to live outside either country if you want to enjoy your criminal gains.
Note anyone taking the above seriously must remember that you can launder money and get away with it, but you may find the places that will take you are not the places you want to live!!!!
See my journal, I write things there