Phone hacking costs two firms £28

The companies targeted in the phone 'phreaking' attacks were in the finance and legal sectors and their systems were hijacked on Saturday and Sunday.

DS Andy Whitton, of Guernsey Police's Commercial Fraud Department, said fraudsters guessed the password to the answerphone accounts and were at that time able to make calls all over the world, including to North Korea and Somalia.

My Phone bill is on the up, when i pick it up, it makes a noise like Old Tiddles used to when he had his saucer of Full Fat,i wonder if i too perhaps being humped on to or hotwired ?

Is it not possible that messrs lawyer and finance sector forgot to hang up their phone when calling their chums abroad? Or moreover likley that some disgruntled employee popped in to use the phone to save their own bill?

The crime of “Phreaking” as a matter of fact costs UK businesses £1.3 to £1.5 billion per annum. These figures come from annual reports of the CFCA a body who have been monitoring communication fraud since 1985.They place the UK as one of the “top 5″ countries in the world affected by this crime.

The long run tracked down a gang of highly organised

In 2009 AT&Tin the long run tracked down a gang of highly organised, highly funded criminals who had routed $55 million worth of illegal calls across their telephone network. While the court case, it was revealed that this gang, based in the Philippines and Italy, had a network of over 2500 telephone systems they had compromised and ready to be “brought into service” if necessary. Many of these telephone systems were in the UK. It was as well proven that the money raised from these phreaking operations were being used to fund terrorism.

These guys are not kids messing about on a home PC. They are highly professional then funded gangs of criminals and truly did not “guess” the passwords that allowed them access to the two telephone systems on Guernsey. They use sophisticated “war diallers” and “password crackers” to gain access.

A Phreaking attack taking everything into consideration involves up to 7 different compromised telephone systems linked at the same time in a chain. Calls are routed from one system to another with the last one in the chain being used to route calls to the phreaker’s intended final destination, as a rule long distance international numbers.

Because the telephone systems forming the “chain” are as a general rule spread around the globe, detection and investigation are a nightmare for the authorities and the phreakers know this only too so then.

Active Voice Security software is available to protect a telephone system against a phreaking attack in the same way Anti-virus and firewall software protect a computer. Now, because the whole subject has not, unbelievably, attracted media attention in the UK, even PABX installers are, usually, ignorant of this.

This software would have prevented the two unfortunate businesses on Guernsey falling victims to this crime to begin with.