Fraud – From Fun Phreak to Terrorism

Cross posted to Humbug Telecom Labs Blog

In today’s news there are headlines showing the darkest side of Telecom Fraud:

•        Terrorists Steal $2m in US Phone Hacking - PC Magazine
•         AT&T Hackers Have Terrorism Ties, Police Say – InformationWeek
•         AT&T customers in $2M Saudi terror hack, via Philippines - Computerworld (blog)
•         Philippines police arrest four over phone scam - The Guardian

Although the titles are different, the source and the story is all the same. The Philippine National Police – Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG) put out a press release explaining how a “joint operatives from the CIDG and the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have busted a group of Filipino hackers whose operation is allegedly being financed by a Saudi-based terrorist group”.

This operation was in response to a complaint filed by AT&T about the hacking of AT&T customer’s PBX’s.

Bit9: The Dirty Dozen of security-vulnerable smartphones

Android has brought a variety of phones, with different hardware and software features to the market. This has enabled more people to get the phone that they want. Bit9 says that unfortunately this has led to “an estimated 56% of Android phones in the marketplace today are running out-of-date and insecure versions of the Android.”

It seems that when phones are released they can be running versions of Android that can be up to 18 months out of date, and thus lacking all the latest security updates.

"All operating systems have vulnerabilities," Harry Svedlove, Bit9's chief technology officer, points out, but it's how quickly and effectively software gets fixed that matters. Bit9's analysis of the most vulnerable smartphones is based on criteria that includes looking at smartphones with the highest market share that were running out-of-date and insecure software and had the slowest update cycles.

The Bit9 "Dirty Dozen" not-so-smart smartphone list includes:

1. Samsung Galaxy Mini

2. 2 HTC Desire

3. Sony Ericsson Xperia X10