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Posted on 10/12/2001 7:53:59 AM PDT by aomagrat

CHARLESTON -- Two Charleston businesses and a newspaper have notified the FBI about unauthorized calls placed to the Middle East through their switchboards.

Hackers broke into the phone system at The (Charleston) Post and Courier and made $4,500 worth of calls to the Middle East and Southeast Asia two weeks before terrorists attacked the World Trade Center and Pentagon, the newspaper reported Wednesday.

The suspicious calls prompted the newspaper to notify the FBI. WCSC-TV and Piggly Wiggly also reported that their phones were hacked into.

According to phone records, 10 calls were placed Aug. 28 and routed through The Post and Courier's switchboard to phone numbers in Yemen, Egypt, Myanmar and Sri Lanka.

The newspaper discovered the calls when it received its phone bill two weeks ago and noticed the calls were made using a different long-distance server than the paper uses.

Henry Bierfischer, The Post and Courier's plant manager, said it is unclear how the hackers accessed the computerized phone system. BellSouth said Tuesday that there was no illegal equipment on the phone lines going into the paper.

"There is probably nothing to it," Publisher Larry Tarleton said. "But we decided that just to be safe, we would send copies (of the bills) to the FBI."

The FBI would not comment on the investigation.

At WCSC-TV, a man posing as a telephone technician talked an operator on Aug. 28 into giving him access to outside phone lines, said assistant news director Mary Rigby.

Two calls were placed to Yemen and Egypt before the station's long-distance carrier spotted a problem and shut down the lines, she said.

On June 22, six calls worth $380 were placed to Yemen and other Middle Eastern countries before the ruse was detected, said Christy Flowers, telecom manager for the Piggly Wiggly supermarket chain.

Both companies alerted the FBI on Wednesday.

The newspaper was targeted the same day as WCSC, exactly two weeks before the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

"Phreakers," or phone hackers, can infiltrate a phone system by getting authorization codes off discarded bills or hiding programs in e-mail that allow them into a company's computer system, the paper reported. They also can gain access to outside lines by fooling switchboard operators.

There are Web sites and publications with instructions for cracking phone systems and many phreakers share their knowledge, said Lt. Chip Johnson, head of the State Law Enforcement Division's computer crime center.

"It's just a matter of knowledge, experience, capabilities and means," he said.

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