58 lines
2.7 KiB
Plaintext
58 lines
2.7 KiB
Plaintext
|
|
|||
|
|
Date: Wed, 13 Mar 91 21:16 CDT
|
|||
|
|
From: Arun Baheti <SABAHE@macalstr.edu>
|
|||
|
|
Subject: Secret Service Foils Cellular Phone Fraud
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
[Moderator's Note: Mr. Baheti passed along this article which I am
|
|||
|
|
presenting as part of the two part series on cellular fraud. The last
|
|||
|
|
issue of the Digest (#200) presented a story by Joe Abernathy. PAT]
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
{New York Newsday}, March 7, 1991, By Joshua Quittner
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
The US Secret Service said one of its agents cracked the code
|
|||
|
|
of counterfeit computer chips to block a kind of cellular telephone
|
|||
|
|
fraud responsible for an estimated $100 million a year in unbillable
|
|||
|
|
long-distance calls.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
During the past two months, the service has quietly
|
|||
|
|
distributed a free software "patch" that blocks unauthorized
|
|||
|
|
long-distance calls at cellular telephone switches. The patch is
|
|||
|
|
being heralded in New York City, where more phone service is stolen
|
|||
|
|
than anywhere else in the country. The first day the patch was put
|
|||
|
|
into use in Los Angeles, more than 5,000 illegal cellular calls were
|
|||
|
|
blocked, a Secret Service spokesman said yesterday.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
[...] The counterfeit chip used by phone cheats exploits a
|
|||
|
|
weakness in the cellular telephone system that allows a caller's first
|
|||
|
|
call to be completed before the billing status is verified ... A
|
|||
|
|
legitimate mobile phone has a silicon chip that generates an
|
|||
|
|
identification number. When a call is made, that number is relayed to
|
|||
|
|
the carrier, along with the caller's phone number, and the two numbers
|
|||
|
|
are compared to establish billing.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
However "depending on where you're roaming and how busy the
|
|||
|
|
cellular network across the country is, you can make a phone call
|
|||
|
|
before that procedure is completed." [Norman Black, Cellular Telephone
|
|||
|
|
Industry Association] To exploit that weakness, underground engineers
|
|||
|
|
designed a counterfeit chip that generates a different, phoney
|
|||
|
|
identification number on each call, tricking [the cellular telephone
|
|||
|
|
exchange] into thinking each call is the first.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
One illegally rigged phone, confiscated by police in New York
|
|||
|
|
City last year, was turned over to the Secret Service, which
|
|||
|
|
investigates, among other things, telecommunications fraud. Like a
|
|||
|
|
hacker -- a phone computer cheat -- the agent broke into the chip,
|
|||
|
|
read the microcode, decoded the algorithm at its core, then wrote a
|
|||
|
|
program that would help carriers detect its peculiar pattern.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
Dave Boll, who heads the Secret Service's Fraud Division in
|
|||
|
|
Washington, said that cellular telephones equipped with the
|
|||
|
|
counterfeit chips "sell for as much as $5,000 each". And he estimated
|
|||
|
|
that such phones are used to make $100 million in unbillable calls
|
|||
|
|
each year.
|
|||
|
|
|
|||
|
|
[The article goes on, to talk about the call-stealing problem
|
|||
|
|
being the worst in NYC and how the unbillable calls tied up the
|
|||
|
|
network for the paying customers].
|
|||
|
|
|