Default Passwords Blamed In $55M PBX Hacks

An anonymous reader writes "The Washington Post is reporting that the US Justice Department has indicted three residents of the Philippines for breaking into more than 2,500 corporate PBX systems in the United States and abroad. The government says the hackers sold access to those systems to operators of call centers in Italy, which allegedly made 12 million minutes of unauthorized phone calls through the system, valued at more than $55 million. The DOJ's action coincides with an announcement from Italian authorities today of the arrest of five men there who are suspected of funneling the profits from those call centers to terrorist groups in Southeast Asia."

Comments

Hacking?

[EdIII]

These were default passwords on more than likely open ports. I would hardly call that hacking. That would be like walking by a house with an open door and saying you picked the lock by walking inside.

One heck of an expensive lesson to the IT guys responsible. Never leave default passwords is Rule #1. Or at least in the top 3.

Re:$55 million

[bruce_the_loon]

You are forgetting the reciprocal costs of phone calls. You break out of the network to another telco, most of the time there are costs per minute. You pay for access to the circuit. Add international calls to this and the numbers climb.

Most telcos have reciprocals in place that say if Telco A made 1000 minutes of calls to Telco B, and Telco B made 1000 minutes to Telco A, they call it quits. Now if A made 1000000 minutes to B, B wants its money. And A has nobody to send the bill to because they were stupid and didn't change the passwords.