Topic: Voicemail Toll Fraud?

[bmreen]

I had a voice mail get hacked this week. Hacker made a few dozen international calls . I was just wandering if anybody does toll restrictions or any other standard internatonal call blocking on ALL their installs and what their prefrences are? We had a call recorder on the PRI and it sounds like the hacker was going through about 5-6 systems to make these calls. I know there are about 100 different ways to restrict the voice mail from either making no outbound calls or only local calls. This is the first time it has happened to us and it looks like we might have to change our default install programming. 

[CMDL_GUY]

If you have to have the voicemail dial out you may want to build a special class of service for the VM ports. I would also look at trunk to truck connections in the switch and remove them if not needed. What system and VM?

[Marc Haycook]

Sadly we don't, but we do change the default passcode for the VM and for the mailboxes. I know many techs that leave the default passcode which is just asking for trouble.

[mdaniel]

Yeah, we would need to know the system your dealing with.
We are an Avaya house, and Avaya tries to make there systems fool proof in that respect by default.

Thanks,

[KLD]

   Been there.....Panasonic is one of the most common ones to be hacked.  Not only change all passwords, but restrict your outbound trunks and contact your service provider...they will put a watch on unusual toll calls for fraud and block them.

You probably won't stop a really determined hacker but you can make it hard enough they will go elsewhere.

Good Luck.

[bmreen]

Its on a Samsung SVMI-8e. I know how to restrict them and change password and toll restrict and cos. I just wanted to get an idea if blocking international calls is a standard procedure for the installs you do. I just have never taken a proactive approch to restrict these or to question the customer if they need to make international calls or if they are going to use any of the message alert options or find me options.

[rich30529]

On Nortel, the mailboxes are not assigned outbound transfer capability by default. The only way to change it is to physically change it onsite through the set or laptop, or it can be done remotely if the voicemail is accessible via the web. In the case of someone remotely getting into the system via the web, it would be shame on the IT guys firewall. I also change the default passwords on all of my voicemail installs.

[WRichey]

Since the ports on the voice mail are considered stations you can give them a different class of service. Then make that class of service restricted from dialing 0. For that matter you can restrict the outbound portion of each mailbox to only dial a designated string of numbers. 7 or 10 depending on the need.

[matherton]

I disable ALL out of province LD on every Samsung voicemail I install unless the customer requests anything different.  When they do, I try to convince them to give me the number (if its only a few) open it up to a specific area code or even just restrict it to North America.  Most sites do not want to through-dial their voicemail to an overseas number...