24 | PHREAKING | FACILITIES
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offers great flexibility to be able to move or transfer phone lines, lower call costs etc, but they are also associated with an online account which can be hacked. So how to stop it? No process is 100
PHREAKING – DON’T BE A VICTIM
What is phreaking? And what precautions can your school take to protect itself from falling victim to it?
P
hreaking is the process of hacking into a telecommunications system in order to make free long-distance
or high-cost calls via your telephone lines. Originally started in the 1960s, phreaking was traditionally a challenging process which involved hacking the signal used by a phone network. The dawn of the internet, broadband, VoIP phones and new technology means that phreaking is now more commonly associated with computer hacking and is simpler and quicker to do. The process is relatively simple in
the right circumstances and can be completed in a mater of minutes. This means any business is technically at risk if it hasn’t taken the right precautions. The ultimate aim of the hacker is usually free calls, so your risk is increased if your business has long absences, is closed at weekends, has multiple phone lines or uses part-time staff. Particularly favourable targets are schools, universities and colleges, whose long holiday periods reduce the risk of immediate detection. The single biggest impact for a business
is the cost: once hacked, a telephone line can be used to make calls repeatedly to high-charge numbers and this can cost a business thousands of pounds in just a few days. Once the calls have been
per cent failsafe, but there are four main prevention methods you can use: Choose a strong password on your telecoms accounts. Every account will come with a default password and this makes it easy to hack. Change it to something which includes numbers and leters (alphanumeric), upper and lower case. Also, change your voicemail passcode. To be extra secure, you should change passwords every 90 days. Bar specific numbers. You can block calls to premium-rate numbers and calls made abroad. Ask for or add a call reporting system.
This enables you to set-up daily reports or alerts which will help you track call volumes and spend, alerting you to unusual calling paterns. If you see any, you can then alert your telecoms provider if they haven’t already notified you. Avoid trunk-to-trunk calls. These are usually used to support conferencing features and direct dial to voicemail services. If you have lines or extensions which don’t need this access, get your telecoms supplier to remove the option. If possible, you should also ask your telecoms supplier about what options they can offer you. Services such as ‘fraud detection’ which monitor normal call paterns can alert or even suspend telephone lines automatically if hacking is suspected. This may provide a small inconvenience, but an hour spent investigating the issue could save you far more money in prevented call charges. Unfortunately, the anonymity of the
“The anonymity of the internet means that if you believe you are being hacked it is unlikely you or anyone else will be able to trace the perpetrators or bring them to justice”
made, you have no formal recourse, so you are liable for the charges, no mater what the cost. In many cases, the devastating impact is bankruptcy. Phreaking or telephone hacking will
most commonly (but not exclusively) occur if you have VoIP phone lines as these are run using computers. VoIP
internet means that even if you know you are being hacked, it is unlikely you or anyone else will be able to trace the perpetrators or bring them to justice. The best defence is prevention. However, if you believe you have been hacked, there are a few things to do: Get your telecoms provider to temporarily suspend your account. This is particularly effective if the hackers are still using the lines, and it will give you space to change passwords, take stock etc. Make sure you change passwords. This will hopefully lock out the hackers. Hacking is all about speed and volume, so it is likely they will move on to other accounts rather than hacking again. iE
Article provided by Eurolink Connect W:
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