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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."
The hacker was in New Orleans. So they were obligated by official policy to ignore his calls.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
I never understood why someone would or could make exhorbatent amin long distance phone calls. The only thing I can figure out is that some nerd was busy talking to his girlfriend on vacation.
While (Idiot.onphone) {
"Hang up!"
"You!"
"No You!"
"No You Hang up!"
}
He used a whistle found in a cereal box.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
He kept calling that damned annoying Verizon guy.
"You're in Thailand now? Can you hear me now?"
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
No, he trained his dog to howl at 2600 hz.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
400 calls totalling $12,000.
That is, about $30 per call.
And from the article: "Most of the calls were about three minutes long, but some were as long as 10 minutes."
As long as 10 minutes? Not only did FEMA have a badly configured phone system, they must have had some of the crappiest call plans I could possibly imagine. I mean, where were the calls terminating? The moon?
Your tax dollars at work.
Do you or your partner snore? - Visit www.snoring.com.au
So he doesn't have a Skype account?
Pfft! Who needs Skype when you have the FEMA Phone! Yes! With the FEMA Phone you can call anywhere in the World for FREE! And if you act now, you can get your own FEMA Trailer for Free!
Subject to criminal prosecution and penalties. Offerer is not responsible for purchaser's stupidity.
Actually he is old school and trained himself to fart at 2600hz...
So, while illegally wiretapping citizen lines, the government *should* have been wiretapping itself...
"If the majority of society has changed the meaning of some workds (hacker/pirate), then the meaning has changed for THE MAJORITY, which now makes you WRONG."
Please tell the biologists to stop misusing bisexual, then. Also tell physicists that quantum leap actually means a big change, not a small one.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
I think FEMA is actually looking pretty smart here. Clearly, they don't pay $5-10/minute for phone calls. So that $12,000 must include the cost to patch the security holes, hunt down lingering trojans, etc.
That seems pretty cheap to me. They could have paid somebody $75,000 to design their system up front, and keep paying their salary to maintain the system.
Or they could cross their fingers and hope nobody exploits their lack of design. If somebody does manage to find their weakness and exploit it, $12,000 in emergency response is a small fee to pay.
It was a lot cheaper than paying for responsible design. They can afford six of these incidents each year and still save money.
What's scary is that I read the disclaimer at 3x actual talking speed.
If thou see a fair woman pay court to her, for thus thou wilt obtain love
this is the AP....you expect them to get that right?
No, but I do expect Slashdot to get it right.
I'd say "you're new here", but your id is low enough that I have to resort to "you should know better."