FEMA Phones Hacked, Calls Made To Mideast and Asia

purplehayes writes "A hacker broke into a Homeland Security Department telephone system over the weekend and racked up about $12,000 in calls to the Middle East and Asia. The hacker made more than 400 calls on a Federal Emergency Management Agency voicemail system in Emmitsburg, Md., on Saturday and Sunday, according to FEMA spokesman Tom Olshanski."

Comments

An act that merits actual attention

[Lucid 3ntr0py]

As opposed to many "victimless crimes" [abuse of govt resources IMHO but its own citizens(come one we should get entitled to more of our own tax money)], I think this incident requires some looking into.

Firstly the person(s) did call many countries on our "watch-list", what ever that may be worth. More importantly who knows that many people that they can rack up 12,000 dollars worth of calls? I mean who are they calling? That my friends is where the real story is.

Terrorist?

[EmperorKagato]

From the article:

Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, India and Yemen are among the countries calls were made to, Olshanski said. Most of the calls were about three minutes long, but some were as long as 10 minutes.

This phreaker could have been a terrorist attempting to make calls back to headquarters in the Middle East.

"This illegal activity enables unauthorized individuals anywhere in the world to communicate via compromised U.S. phone systems in a way that is difficult to trace," according to a department information bulletin from June 3, 2003.

Since 2003? FEMA really needs to tighten up!