Hackers Have Broken Into GPRS Billing
Guy Kewney is reporting that some hackers have cracked a security vulnerability associated with GPRS billing and have been ripping off customers left and right. He expects more details to be officially revealed today. The vulnerability comes from the way the GPRS network links up to the internet as a whole, assigning an IP address to the connection in service. The hackers keep pinging IP addresses owned by GPRS providers until they find one that responds - showing that it's in use. They then start providing "services" to that GPRS user, which the user ends up getting billed for. Of course, it would seem easy to catch the scammers, since they're the ones getting paid for the faked services. It sounds like the story was leaked by Check Point who (of course) is offering up a solution to the problem.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team