Your phone bill, in their hands……

The abuse of telephone systems is not a new phenomenon. Back in 1957 Joe Engressia Jr (who subsequently changed his name to Joybubbles in 1991!) was whistling down phone lines. He initially discovered through his ability to whistle pitch perfectly that he was able to produce tones that the phone system recognized as a "hang up" signal. Over time he perfected more tones until he was able to initiate long distance phone calls for free. He was expelled from college after being caught providing telephone calls for a dollar per call. In the early 1970's before digitalization replaced the tone-based system, many young phone hackers, or phreakers as they were known, were running amok on the US phone network – even the founders of Apple, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, were allegedly involved during their nascent years.

A 1970's youngster making a phone call for free is one thing (and almost viewed as a kind of Robin Hood gesture in light of the phone corporations' vast wealth at the time) but phreaking in the 21^st century is a decidedly darker, more sinister affair. By compromising unsuspecting companies' telephone systems, today's phone hackers (phreakers by definition – but far removed from the tame efforts of the late 20^th century), are able to fund international crime and terrorism. Exploiting a company telephone system is worryingly straightforward and once a system is in the hands of a phreaker they have access to the system passwords and a free reign on placing calls. The calls are typically routed through the invaded system outside of office hours and during weekends so the activity goes unnoticed (that is, until the next phone bill comes through). The criminals translate these calls to cash by selling "pre-paid" phone cards to unsuspecting members of the public. The calls cost the criminals nothing so the phone card proceeds are pure profit.

Globally phone fraud is four times bigger than credit card fraud and the UK is one of the top 5 countries to be targeted by phone hackers. Companies with affected systems have found their phone bill leap to 20 times the standard cost – some have experienced even greater amounts and the first they knew anything about it was on receipt of their phone bill. A security breach on an unprotected system can take milliseconds to initiate. Once inside the phone system phreakers will, by default, avoid all network and internet security and thus gain backdoor access to PCs and data networks.

There is, you'll be relieved to hear, a solution. These days firewalls are a standard feature on computers and data networks, and now there's a firewall for your phone system. When it comes down to guarding your company's assets the use of a phone system firewall can detect and kill diverted calls – the preferred route for phreakers. Talk to one of hjs essentia's telecommunications experts today about protecting your office telephone system from attack.