Telephone Hijack - is this possible?

[TonyJollans]

Hi All,

My sister-in-law recently got a higher than average 'phone bill and queried some of the calls with BT. They told her that it is possible for her number to be hijacked as a direct result of the spam messages received by the Messnger Service. I have only recently become aware of these and was so taken aback by them that I immediately found out how to disable them, but this is something more than annoyance - is it really possible?

Enjoy,
Tony

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[jrbarnett]

I know its possible to have diallers call premium rate or foreign numbers after first switching off the modem speaker so you wouldn't hear the dialling take place. While I suppose such items could arrive via MSN Messenger (or any other instant messaging application) as well as ordinary emails, I haven't yet heard of any method of hijacking ordinary telephone calls from a computer.

Best advice is what I do, make sure the modem cable is disconnected from the telephone socket when not online.
I'm not sure if BT still offers a blocking on premium rate numbers, but you could try customer services.

John

 

[TonyJollans]

Thanks John,

I believe all the calls were to premium rate numbers. That would make sense as the owner of the numbers would get paid for all calls made.

If I understand correctly you are saying that a program could arrive and install itself via the messenger service and then, when you are offline, it could start up and dial out - frightening.

Enjoy,
Tony

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[jrbarnett]

I have both sent and received files through Windows messenger, but not programs, mostly word documents and PDFs.

It may be that it was a trojan and came with one of the messages enciting people to double click the executable file. I myself fell foul of a "text file" which was actually a virus recently, and spent a couple of hours clearing that up.

Aside from that, I'd ensure that MSN is up to date and fully service packed and patched, as well as the operating system it runs on, together with a good antivirus package kept up to date.

John

 

[happydownloader]

Get adaware and spybot
Sounds like you have a dialer installed from either a porn site or somewhere else
There are lots of different ones out there and both programs will catch 99.9% of them

 

[TonyJollans]

Hi happydownloader,

Have already advised same - also HJT. It was BT's assertion that it could come about simply via the messenger service that surprised (and concerned) me.

Enjoy,
Tony

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[Kesser]

I saw this recently on a customers machine who seemed to think it happened when she tried to close a pop-up. Spybot in conjunction with CWshredder will get rid but also ensure you go into add/remove and get rid of anything you don't recognise, also into dial up networking to delete any dialers that shouldn't be there and also into your C drive where u may find the odd dialer knocking about. Clean out all temp internet files, temp files and cookies and delete all offline content. Do it all in safe mode to be safe - i think it's caused by a trojan but not sure which one. It was a pain to get rid of for me too - make sure you stop any running processes in start up via msconfig.

Kes

 

[jmaddone]

Here is an article
from PC Magazine with more information about this. It happened to a friend of mine.

 

[kiddpete]

Zone Alarm now offers a 'fire wall' for IM.

 

[TonyJollans]

Thanks, All, for the comments and references. I have learnt a lot - again.

As a side note to this, last week I competely refreshed my machine and before I had reinstalled all my software I let my son (13) go on a PS2 Games Cheats site somewhere and I got infected - a reminder, if I needed it, of how easily it can happen.

Enjoy,
Tony

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[jlockley]

We had our number hijacked for 900 nr calls by an outside source, but not with a program which dials out to premium numbers.

From the non computer side, your sister needs to contact a) the phone company and explain. They will not insist on the charges b) The District Attorney's fraud office to get a case number (this will probably happen again and c) the phone company again to put a password on her account, in case this is happening from a non electronic source. Once we had a relatively simple password in place, our problems ceased. Thanks for the warning. I will monitor our bills better in the future.

 

[bluedragon2]

And since this thread involves phone calls, I will inject a scam that is running around again. You may get a message to call someone about your family, or something and the number is an 809 area code. DO NOT CALL THIS NUMBER... This is somewhere in the bahamas and have no regulations. You can be charged a great deal of money for the call. I have heard some cases, over 2,000 dollars. The phone companies in the US do offer 900 blocking, but I do not think they offer 809 blocking. Just a friendly notice...



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If I wasn't Blue, I would just be a Dragon...

 

[2ffat]

Bluedragon2,
[tab]Why not start a new thread with the NEWS flag about this. It's a good thing to be reminded about this from time to time.

James P. Cottingham

^{There's no place like 127.0.0.1.
There's no place like 127.0.0.1.}

 

[bluedragon2]

2ffat,

I posted it in the Information Security Group Forum...



[Blue]Blue[/Blue] [Dragon]

If I wasn't Blue, I would just be a Dragon...