Hacker cracks Net phone providers for gain
June 7th, 2006 by David EndlerThe New York Times is reporting a story about Edwin Andres Pena, a 23 year old Miami resident who was arrested today by the Federal government. The Feds allege that Pena was involved in a scheme to sell discounted Internet phone service by breaking into other Internet phone providers and piggybacking connections through their networks unbeknowst to them. According to the story:
To evade detection, Pena is said to have hacked into computers run by an unsuspecting investment company in Rye Brook, N.Y., commandeered its unprotected servers and re-routed his phone traffic through them. These steps made it appear as if that company was sending calls to more than 15 Internet phone companies.
In one three-week period, for instance, prosecutors say that one of the victimized Internet phone providers, based in Newark, received about 500,000 calls that were made to look as if they came from the company in Rye Brook. The Newark company was left having to pay $300,000 in connection fees for routing the phone traffic to other carriers, without receiving any revenue for the calls, prosecutors said.
You can read the entire story here.
September 16th, 2006 at 8:31 am
[...] Edwin Pena, the man facing charges over a VoIP fraud, discussed here some months back, has fled, violating his bail conditions. Information Week has the story here. [...]
August 3rd, 2007 at 7:10 pm
[...] the Pena/Moore voip fraud case back in June 2006? Would you like to know how the attacks were done? And how you can protect [...]
October 23rd, 2009 at 1:16 pm
[...] those not familiar, the story began back in June 2006 with the initial reports that Pena masterminded a scheme to sell phone service and then running [...]