Path: utzoo!telecom-request Date: Sat, 15 Jun 91 02:24 PDT From: John Higdon Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Fighting Phone Hackers in SoCal Reply-To: John Higdon Message-ID: Organization: Green Hills and Cows Sender: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 460, Message 5 of 7 Lines: 69 Mark Seecof quotes the {LA Times}: > ``Little Phone Company on a Hacker Attack'' > By Susan Christian, Times Staff Writer. On June 13, the {San Jose Mercury} ran a story about Ms. Bigley's courageous efforts. The writer, Alex Barnum, did a little more investigating and presented a little more balanced picture than Ms. Christian. Excerpts below: Firm's Big Phone Fees Hang up Hackers by Alex Barnum, Mercury Staff Writer "A year ago, Thrifty Tel Inc. won approval from the state Public Utilites Comission ot charge unauthorized users of its long-distance lines a 'special' rate: a $3,000 'set-up' charge, a $3,000 daily line fee, $200 an hour for labor and the costs of investigating and prosecuting the offender. "Since then, the Garden Grove company has netted $500,000 and caught 72 hackers, ranging from an 11-year-old girl to a grandma-gradpa team of professional phone hackers." [Doesn't sound as if Thrifty Tel came off too badly on that one, does it? That's $500,000 NET profit on hackers. JH] "But while many have applauded Thrifty Tel's ingenuity, others have criticized the company for taking the law into its own hands. Some Los Angeles law enforcement officials, in fact, say the approach borders on extortion ... "Others charge that Thrifty Tel is deliverately baiting its long-distance system with lax security to catch hackers and bring in new revenue. Thrifty Tel is 'a vigilante,' says John Higdon, a San Jose phone network expert." [blush].... "Even a single call can cost a hacker more than $6,000. And Thrifty Tel charges an extra $3,000 for every access code the hacker uses. Since about half of Thrifty Tel's hacker 'customers' are minors, their parents usually wind up footing the bill. "Moreover, as a condition of the settlement, Thrifty Tel requires hackers to hand over their computers which mirrors a provision in the criminal code. Bigley usually turns the computer over to authorities, although she says she kept one once. [She kept more than that according to her own conversation with me. JH] "While praising Bigley's basic strategy, law enforcement officials say she has taken it a step too far. 'She can threaten a civil suit, but not criminal charges,' says one official. 'You don't use a criminal code to enforce a civil settlement.'"... "Other critics charge that Thrifty Tel is deliberately haiting hackers with antiquated switching technology and short access codes that are easier to hack than the more modern, secure technology and 14-digit access codes of the major long-distance carriers." Mr. Barnum has all the quotes from Ms. Bigley that the {LA Times} article had, which essentially contain the circular argument that it costs money to upgrade to FGD and why should Thrifty have to spend that money on account of "thugs and criminals" while whining about all the losses suffered at the hands of the hackers. Thrifty's technique looks more like a profit center than hacker "prevention". John Higdon | P. O. Box 7648 | +1 408 723 1395 john@zygot.ati.com | San Jose, CA 95150 | M o o !