Default Passwords Led to $55 Million in Bogus Phone Charges

The US Justice Department today unsealed indictments against three Filipino residents accused of hacking into thousands of private telephone networks in the United States and abroad, and then selling access to those networks at call centers in Italy that advertised cheap international calls. The indictment alleges that between October 2005 and December 2008, Manila residents Mahmoud Nusier, Paul Michael Kwan and Nancy Gomez broke into PBX systems, mainly by exploiting factory-set or default passwords on the voicemail systems. The government charges that the Italian call centre operators paid the hackers $100 for each hacked PBX system they found