Telephony Fraud – Still going strong
simionovich.com
simionovich.com
Often the multiple calls a denial of service - frequent numbers are often large companies being subject to a denial of service (the US embassy is a popular target) or they are test calls to verify a server works (i.e. call their own number and listen for audio) before pimping it out for toll fraud.
The PA ones could be a mix of that plus the more sinister DoS block on targets about to be attacked to prevent them calling for help.
There's a list of hack attempts over a much longer period available at https://network-systems-solutions.ca/voipblocklist.php That gives a bit more meat for anyone interested in looking for patterns (or protecting their server I suppose)
To be more accurate, I've shown a snippet describing only 48 hours of "suspected attacks" that were performed to a single server. The overall network contains 6 different honeypots around the world, which had been changing IP numbers once every 7 days for the past 2 years.
Just to give a rough idea, the overall number of attacks, that specific server received in the month of December was over 180,000 attacks, with about 60 distinct attack sources and about 8 different attack patterns. Analysing all the data is far beyond my current time capability, simply because I'm dealing with other subjects.
It is true that you can't deduce any type of specific reasoning from the displayed information, as the data set is very much limited. However, it shows that as much as Skype/Facebook/Whatsapp are popular, the popularity of VoIP hacking and hijacking still proves this is a booming market with much financial gain.
What's the pay off? The numbers listed in the article are not premium rate. Are they just test numbers or is there another pay off?
I suspect this fraudster would 'resell' the route to a wholesaler.
Another common fraud is to provide cheap calls to a certain area/country. (often named black/grey routes).
Basically the telco or state regulators might have a very expensive price to call a certain country/network. You set up your own telephony service in country A, route incoming calls over the internet to country B where you set up a similar service that can terminate the calls in country B.
Your call the phone number in country A , that phone is just a bot/pbx, which routes the call over to country B, but using the cheap internet, instead of the expensive price your telco would charge you to do. Seen from the telco in both in country A and B, it's just two local calls.
What's even cheaper than doing this ? Hack an existing PBX tp do the same, to incur all costs to the PBX owner.
1. Calling user does not have a computer
2. Called user does not have a computer
3. Users are in a situation where they do not have a computer, only their cell phone, with a data plan that is too expensive to use skype, or without a data plan altogether.
4. Users does not know about, are not able or trained to use skype.
5. Internet is not available at the location of either of the users.
6. Users are in a coverage area with only basic phone services, no data availability.
Throughout the world there are far, far more people having access to simple phone services than a computer and the internet.
The places I often see these kinds of frauds, are for minorities living/working in one country, that wants to talk to their families back home - often poor people with no access to a computer, nor the ability to operate one - but with a mobile phone, and a little bit of money to pay for a few calls - which is enough for someone else to make a buck by selling blakc/grey routes to these people.
I did something like that, and was surprised to learn both the lack of media, and predictable media (white noise, or a particular pre-recording) were themselves indicative of 'artificial traffic' (and therefore, likely fraud).
Is calling Palestine Mobile Phones not possible over VOIP currently? I kinda want to let a few calls complete, cause that is often a destination fraudulent call attempts try to call. I see the prefix in my ratedeck, anyone know of a less expensive provider?
Israel,Palestine,97292,0.189,1,1 Israel,Palestine,97282,0.189,1,1 Israel,Palestine,97242,0.189,1,1 Israel,Palestine,97222,0.189,1,1 Israel,Palestine Mobile Other,97259,0.219,1,1 Israel,Palestine Mobile Other,97256,0.219,1,1
800 numbers aren't free - the recipient pays. It may even be illegal to forward your fraud traffic to them (but IANAL).
When calling Israel on 97259, or 97222, or 97242, or 972502, or 972522 or 972542 - in some specific number ranges, you actually reach the PA. This is why many Israeli and worldwide PBX owners have routing mistakes on them, and you can basically get a minute of PA traffic, that normally costs around $0.19 for - wait for it - $0.008.
The main issue is that when the ITU assigned 970 to the PA, they never made them drop the 972 prefix - resulting in the world's longest arbitrage wholesale game.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:94_ZVFM...