TTY phone fraud and abuse

Mon Apr 12 00:11:03 UTC 2004

On Apr 11, 2004, at 6:55 PM, Sean Donelan wrote:

>> Can people abuse the phone system?  yes, of course it can, but the
>> criteria for response are much higher, and in general the nature of 
>> the
>> network (low concurrent session limit, point to point, voice only) as 
>> it
>> is exposed to most people limits the damage that can be casually 
>> incurred.
>
> There is a difference between crimes against the telephone system
> and crimes using telephones.  The Department of Justice estimates
> Telemarketing fraud is a $40 Billion a year problem. But telemarketing
> fraud doesn't necessarily reflect a security vulnerability in the
> telephone system per se.  Or at least not a security vulnerability
> that can be solved solely by the telephone system.

I'm not certain why telemarketing fraud is that much different than a 
DDoS by zombies.  The underlying network does not really have much to 
do with either other than supplying transport.  And tightening security 
on the network layer wouldn't stop either from happening.

Since the major threat to networks these days is zombies, and there is 
very little you can do to IP to stop this from happening, why people 
keep commenting that IP is insecure....

-- 
TTFN,
patrick