FEMA Phones Hacked, Calls Made To Mideast and Asia 241
purplehayes writes "A hacker broke into a Homeland Security Department telephone system over the weekend and racked up about $12,000 in calls to the Middle East and Asia.
The hacker made more than 400 calls on a Federal Emergency Management Agency voicemail system in Emmitsburg, Md., on Saturday and Sunday, according to FEMA spokesman Tom Olshanski."
Incompetence... (Score:4, Insightful)
DHS is like the laughing stock of government security. Being PBX Phreaked with a 15 year old hack is just bad... Hope the next administration isn't this incompetent.
Re:Hacker? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, the correct term is Phreaking [wikipedia.org], but come on, this is the AP....you expect them to get that right?
Re:In FEMA's defense (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey, it would be a little 'justice'...considering how badly FEMA screwed over many from the area.
Just another example of the incompetence of this Federal government agency. From my experience with them, and most all other govt agencies that have to deal with large numbers of people...sadly, the incompetence, red tape, and waste of money is a common denominator.
And now...we're wanting to put THEM in charge of our medical care? Scary.
Re:Terrorist? (Score:3, Insightful)
Here it comes (Score:1, Insightful)
CNN had a front page article about how a cyber attack could do more damage than any other act of terrorism. Now this...
Bye-bye internets...get ready for broadcast with tracked user clicks.
Re:Hacker? (Score:2, Insightful)
For example - GAY used to mean happy. It doesn't, anymore... because the majority of people no longer think of it that way. Therefore, if you're GAY, you're homosexual, not happy.
Same thing with Pirate/hacker.
get a life, and move out of your mom's basement.
What a surprise (Score:2, Insightful)
If anybody ever doubted that these clowns are better at sucking up tax dollars and destroying the US Constitution than providing security, look no further for the proof.
Osama must be laughing his ass off.
Silly (Score:3, Insightful)
Hacking PBXes was ok 15 years ago.
Hacking them now is pretty much guaranteed to get him caught.
Oh well...
But he assured the hole has since been closed... (Score:5, Insightful)
"I don't know who it was or what they did or didn't do, but I assure you they fixed it."
Re:Hacker? (Score:3, Insightful)
Changes in language can be classified as "ignorance" only by the same logic that Iraq can be classified as "Successful." As has been said before: language changes. Dealing with that change, or ordering it back like Knut ordered back the tide, is entirely up to you.
But please do not expect people to appreciate or respect you when you're being irrelevant.
Re:Who hacks phones anymore? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you haven't noticed, the best way to get a bigger budget and more power is to be incompetent. That's the supposed reason why DHS was created in the first place.
If you subsidize stupidity, that is all you'll ever get.
Expensive rate (was:Government Accounting) (Score:3, Insightful)
Assuming the phone was "off the hook" for the entire 48 hours and only one call is placed at any given time, that's 2880 minutes, or $4.17 a minute. Any phone company charging that kind of rate per minute will get call into the capital by state utility commission (AT&T charges just over a buck a minute for cellphone roaming calls originating in Asia.)
what sort of crap? (Score:1, Insightful)
What sort of crap is this story?
With my long distance plan I pay $0.05 per minute anywhere in North America and ditto even into Australia.
$0.05 * 60 * 24 = $72 per day.
Saturday + Sunday = 2 days.
What part of this story makes no sense?
Re:In FEMA's defense (Score:2, Insightful)
And now...we're wanting to put THEM in charge of our medical care? Scary.
Well, as a Canadian I can tell you that you're right, health-care run but bureaucrats is a bit scary. But, there is a bit of a problem with the alternative: the nature of heath-care is such that unless you are VERY rich, you want insurance. The problem with insurance is that it's not their job to heal you, it's their job to make money - and they are very good at it.
So, an incompetent bureaucrat managing my health care dollars is still much better than an insurance company.
PS: This goes for car insurance to. British Columbia has mandatory crown insurance - the company makes money for the government and still has lower insurance rates than the privatized provinces (I now live in Ontario).
Re:In FEMA's defense (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm a little uncertain as to why you think private insurance provides more efficient health care? If anything, private insurance makes more profit by denying as much health care as possible.
Re:Who hacks phones anymore? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd like to offer a dissenting opinion on the FEMA issue in New Orleans. States are supposed to have some kind of emergency preparedness of their own. It's not enough to just fall apart and beg for FEMA to save you. FEMA's traditional role has been to show up late and provide sustaining support in the aftermath of an event, not to be the first responders at the moment of crisis. Many other states understand this. Texas (a nearby neighbor who ended up bearing the brunt of the NO disaster refugees) for example rarely needs FEMA - when hurricanes head for Texas, they deploy their local resources to remedy the immediate situation.
The problem with the NO disaster was not FEMA. The problem was the bankrupt, ineffective, unprepared, and completely corrupt local and state governments in the area who had nothing to offer their citizens when disaster struck.
Re:In FEMA's defense (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:In FEMA's defense (Score:4, Insightful)
The big, really big, in fact just simply enormous problem with where the US healthcare system is heading is that you will have an incompetent bureaucracy subcontracting management to an insurance company. Worst of both worlds.
If you think the problem is bad now, just wait until we fix it! (attrib: somebody or other, use Google if you must know)
Re:In FEMA's defense (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Who hacks phones anymore? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:In FEMA's defense (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, and people are stupid for living in California with its earthquakes and wildfires, and people are stupid for living in the midwest with the tornados, and people are stupid for living pretty much anywhere in the U.S. with the yellowstone caldera overdue to blow, and people are stupid for living . . .
Pensacola has had the misfortune to be hit by several hurricanes. By your logic, you are a fool to still live there.
And for all of the smug idiots who think they are paying for me to live in what should be a swamp, you don't think my tax dollars go to benefit you in any way? I pay my own way just like you do. I just expected the government to respond more effectively to a disaster that happened to hit my home. And I expected my homeowners insurance and my federal flood insurance, which I pay for every month, to actually pay out at a reasonable rate when my home gets wiped off the face of the earth without endless delays and bureaucratic crap.
Enjoy your smug self-righteous attitude and hope that if anything ever happens to you the rest of us don't share your attitude.
Re:In FEMA's defense (Score:1, Insightful)
He increased involvement from 800 to 16,300 after the Diem coup of 63 indicated things were getting right out of control on the ground there -- this is right after the Cuban Missile Crisis I might add; spreading Communism seemed a very active threat. McNamara and Johnson both stated Kennedy was also planning to pull out - the increase was a temporary measure to correct the Diem mess and make pull-out from Vietnam possible in 64. And he got shot during this formative stage, and McNamara and Johnson and others took involvment in another direction entirely.
My question is how many of those 16,300 were conscripts? Conscription was a low-level thing in the US military until it was ramped up in 64, and the only stats I can find about service of conscripts in that war start with 64.
It's an honest question; I'm not arguing with you -- I'm saying you should look into the mess even deeper than you are. And I am definitely not a Kennedy fan. He was quite the operator, and I always figured if he hadn't been shot he would have left office under a disgrace similar Clinton's cigar episode.
Re:In FEMA's defense (Score:2, Insightful)
Why was this modded insightful? From someone that lives in Mobile, AL (formerly of Pensacola), that went through Ivan and Katrina, I find your comments both self-serving and wrong.
"The problems with New Orleans were primarily the fault of the state of Louisiana and the city government, not the Federal Government and FEMA" Wrong. That "not" should be "as well as". The feds send in the Oklahoma National Guard to disarm the populace.
Ok you did a clever thing in your post. Use facts to cover up your faulty logic. First, the OK Nat'l Guard was sent in, to control the populace, because the state and local law enforcement could not do the job. One of the reasons you mention for me, which is because the city police were taking part in the looting. Also, the US Army and US Navy were actually first on scene, and the very first thing they did was to rescue as many people as they could, and get as many people as they could to safe areas. Something Nagin could've done by alerting people to evac 36-48 hours before the arrival, but he failed to do this.
(1) Why wasn't the guard delivering water or handing out tarps ?!
"Debit cards after Katrina, without any vetting process to determine who needed money". The fact of the matter is each debit card was 2,000. Let's see. I just lost everything I own. The government's answer is to give me 2,000. I might get to go live in a trailer built by the lowest builder.
The debit cards were meant as immediate assistance, not total assistance. In other words, it was to cover immediate expenses such as food, hotel rooms, etc. The problem is not that they were given out. That was, in fact, a brilliant idea. Give the people some immediate assistance then follow up later with the real assistance. The problem is they gave them to whomever would stand in line, and many people got multiple cards by having more than one person in their family stand in line many times over. Like I said, there was no vetting process to determine need and if a card was already given. Nor was there any limit to what the cards could be used on, or in what purchase amounts. Making purchase amounts of around $200-400 (common limits for ATMs) per transaction or per day would've solved a lot of the "sex change operation" issues.
In 2006, there was a Mobile man convicted on defrauding Katrina. So those who abused the system are being brought to Justice. Slowly.
Yeah, and how many thousands upon thousands of people looted, defrauded, and murdered and got off scott free?
The snopes link (3) will serve to clear up the other bad information.
"What major aid was given to Biloxi," The state of Mississippi took it.
And yet Biloxi recovered very well, compared to New Orleans. Their recovery effort depended a lot more on help from Casinos, but even with that a lot of it was done simply by the common people, as the Casinos were more concerned with getting their cash cows back into operation.
"For that matter, other than blue tarps and MREs, people in Pensacola had to all but fend for themselves after Ivan, but we managed just fine." Two things. First, that's like compare minor and major league baseball. Katrina and Ivan were different classes.
I'd have thought that as someone who lived in the Gulf Coast you'd know better than to make a comment like that. When both storms were brewing in the Gulf, Katrina hit Cat 5 and Ivan was also a Cat 5. When Katrina hit shore between LA and MS (meaning that the weak side of the storm, the side that caused less wind damage, hit New Orleans, not the stronger side that hit Biloxi, Gulfport, and Bay St. Louis), it was a Category 3. When Ivan hit between Gulf Shores and Pensacola (unlike how you claim it was a direct hit on Gulf Shores, the eye of the storm actually passed East of Gulf Shores and West of Pensacola, meaning that the harshest winds fell upon Pensacola, Pace, and