"Emerging technologies and the Internet represent a sea of opportunity for business but also for sophisticated criminals," Christopher J. Christie, the United States attorney in New Jersey, whose office is prosecuting the case, said in a statement. "The challenge, which we and the F.B.I. continue to meet with investigations and prosecutions like this one, is to stay ahead of the cyber-criminal and protect legitimate commerce."
EVERYTHING presents a sea of opportunity for sophisticated criminals. The whole flipping Nevada telephone network was hacked around the turn of the century.
All this means is people have to lock down their network security.
2 Charged in Scheme Said to Defraud Internet Phone Providers
By KEN BELSON and TOM ZELLER Jr.
Federal authorities yesterday arrested a Miami man who they said made more than $1 million in a hacking scheme involving the resale of Internet telephone service.
The suspect is accused of surreptitiously routing calls through the lines of legitimate Internet phone companies, saddling them with the expense of carrying the traffic while he pocketed the connection fees from customers. A second man was arrested in Washington State, and charged with aiding in the scheme.
The case, representing an elaborate new form of Internet hacking, raises fresh questions about the security of phone traffic over largely unregulated networks.
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. Such companies typically help connect long-distance calls by buying minutes from large carriers and reselling them for a profit to smaller phone companies.
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.
To evade detection, Mr. Pena is said to have first funneled the calls through hacked network ports at other companies, including one run by an unsuspecting investment company in Rye Brook, N.Y., after Mr. Moore found that a network router there was unprotected. These steps made it appear as if this company were originating the calls.
In a three-week period, for instance, prosecutors say one victimized Internet phone provider, based in Newark, handled about 500,000 calls made to look as if they came from the company in Rye Brook.
In all, more than 15 Internet phone companies, including the one in Newark, were left 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.
