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