University falls prey to phone tricksters
COLLEGE STATION, Texas (Reuters) --Telephone hackers in Saudi Arabia broke into Texas A&M University's phone system and left voice mail messages that enabled them to make international calls charged to the school, an A&M spokesman said on Friday.
It is not yet known how many calls were made or how much was fraudulently charged to the university, but at least five of A&M's 25,000 lines were hit, spokesman Lane Stephenson said.
Phone company security workers notified the school of the breach on Thursday.
The hackers guessed the passwords to the voice mail boxes because the mail box owners had used the phone numbers as their passwords, a practice that is discouraged, Stephenson said.
According to The Bryan-College Station Eagle newspaper, the hackers then rerecorded the voice mail messages to say "Hello" when picked up. After a pause long enough for an operator to ask, "Will you accept the charges?," the message said "yes."
Once the operator connected the call, the hackers could transfer it wherever they wished, all at A&M's expense, officials said.
Asked if everyone had been told to change their voice mail passwords, Stephenson answered, "You bet."
