$1 million Netphone hijacks
p2p news / p2pnet: Fresh questions about online phone traffic have been raised in a case where a scammer and his hacker confederate made more than $1 million by hijacking Net telephone services.
"Prosecutors say that starting in November 2004, Edwin Andres Pena, 23, a Venezuelan who has permanent residency in the United States and lives in Miami, used two companies he started to offer wholesale phone connections at discounted rates," says the New York Times, going on:
"But instead of buying access to other networks to connect his clients’ calls, Mr. Pena is said to have conspired with Robert Moore, a 22-year-old hacker in Spokane, Wash., to create ‘what amounted to "free" routes by surreptitiously hacking into the computer networks’ of unwitting Internet phone providers, and then routing his customers’ calls over those providers’ systems, the federal complaint says."
Pena, "first funneled the calls through hacked network ports at other companies" after Moore found an unprotected network router, the story states. "These steps made it appear as if this company were originating the calls."
More than 15 Net phone companies ended up having to pay as much as $300,000 each in connection fees for routing the phone traffic to other carriers without receiving any revenue for the calls, prosecutors said, according to the NYT, which adds:
"Mr. Pena was charged with one count of wire fraud, which carries a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison, and one count of computer fraud, with a maximum term of 5 years; each count could also result in a $250,000 fine. Mr. Pena appeared in court in Miami yesterday, and was jailed overnight pending a bail hearing today.
"Mr. Moore, who is said to have received about $20,000 from Mr. Pena for his work, was charged with conspiracy, punishable by a five-year jail term and a $250,000 fine. He appeared in court in Spokane and was released on bail."
"A lot of people probably think of ‘Google’ when someone says ‘a hackers best friend’," says Moore (upper right) on MySpace.com.
He lists "Spirituality, Possessions, Ghosts, Hauntings, Religions, History, Documentaries, Computers, Hacking" as his interests and says:
"Well, sure Google is good for footprinting information on a company to find more information than they want you to find (part of the penetration process)," he goes on. "It’s also good for general digging of information if you want to be lame and root peoples servers who have shit wide open that should not be, such as shadowed password files and various other information that should not be shown to the public eye.
"Well in my opinion, there are something a lot better then Google for being a "hackers" best friend. It is a live linux distrobution called Whax, previously known as Whoppix. The whole purpose of this disto is to give a professionl hacker the tool he needs to penetrate a network on the go. It’s even built around wireless compatability, so if you’re a war driver, this is a must for you."
Digg this story.
Also See:
New York Times – 2 Charged in Scheme Said to Defraud Internet Phone Providers, June 8, 2008
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June 11th, 2006 at 10:23 am
like hijacking someone’s reputation for profit, quite repugnant. You are a grubby loiar John, but then that’s not offensive to most people so why don’t you leave it up, of course you wont becuase as a liar yhou are also a hypocrite profiting from your libel and enshrining the libel on your website. Shame Hemming couldn’t pay for advertisng you libeller