Why would you bother to hack our voicemail?

Forums › One New Zealand (including Vodafone, WxC, Farmside) › Why would you bother to hack our voicemail?

nickd

447 posts

Ultimate Geek

#107761 19-Aug-2012 13:18

Gidday All,

Recently we got locked out of our Vodafone voicemail at home. The greeting message was reset to the standard one and the pin code was changed. Gave the team at Vodafone a call to find out what the story was and have been told that it was hacked at our end.

It seems strange that someone would go to all of the trouble to hack our home voicemail system. I can't imagine a bigger waste of time, surely there must be more important things to hack than an empty voicemail? Or is there something I'm missing here, the pin used for our voicemail is unique and isn't used anywhere else...

Nick

VodafoneCB

41 posts

Geek

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#674230 19-Aug-2012 13:40

Hi there,

hacked seems like quite strong word for our people to have used,is it possible that the information was deleted while someone at your end was trying to make a change?No offence intended but Im guessing someone able to "hack" the system would probably busy themselves doing something more profitable,but then I dont know what your messages were :-)

If you want us to reinvestigate Im happy to follow up for you,otherwise lets see what posters can add to this thread.

Chris
^CB

Vodafone staff. You'll see me on the @vodafoneNZ twitter account and Vodafone NZ facebook page signing off as ^CB

Kyanar

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#674232 19-Aug-2012 13:44

Question for Vodafone, it's not possible to bounce phone calls via Voicemail is it? The only way I can see "hacking" random home users voicemail being profitable is if there's some way to route long distance calls on dodgy calling cards through it.

nickd

447 posts

Ultimate Geek

#674234 19-Aug-2012 13:51

Thanks for the reply Chris. No offence taken, I was a bit surprised that our messages about remembering the milk would have been of that much interest, which is why I was asking if it could be used for getting access to something more profitable (which for the life of me, I couldn't think of) even though the pin isn't the same as anyone's EFTPOS or the alarm etc.

It is possible that the information was deleted while someone was trying to make changes, but nobody was home while this happened so it seems a little strange. I'm not particularly concerned about how it happened, the Vodafone team were helpful and nice and efficient with getting everything back the way it was.

coffeebaron

6231 posts

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#674241 19-Aug-2012 14:22

Have you recently changed between Red & Wholesale networks?

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nickd

447 posts

Ultimate Geek

#674242 19-Aug-2012 14:28

Not that I am aware of, we are currently on the Red network. There were connection issues which I posted about about a month back, but that was resolved.

kontonnz

137 posts

Master Geek

#674261 19-Aug-2012 16:06

Why would someone hack into voicemail because it is profitable, you might not see the profit but someone else might. just ask Andy Coulson, Stuart Kuttner, and News of the World, this lot obviously thought at some point that voicemail was very valuable to them.

this is why eCrime exists people are not vigilante enough on stuff they think has no value but in reality has value.

this does not mean the OP voicemail was hacked, more than likely someone made a mistake somewhere

VodafoneCB

41 posts

Geek

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#674366 19-Aug-2012 20:04

coffeebaron: Have you recently changed between Red & Wholesale networks?

Something like this might make sense, nickd if you can PM me your phone number we'll look.

Chris
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Vodafone staff. You'll see me on the @vodafoneNZ twitter account and Vodafone NZ facebook page signing off as ^CB

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VodafoneCB

41 posts

Geek

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#675041 21-Aug-2012 11:53

Hi all,

we've had a look and because the issue was resolved with a reset its hard to know what was actually happening,there doesnt seem to have been any work done that might have lead our people to touch the mail box,the tech team are fairly sure it wasnt hack.

It seems far more likely the box was locked by incorrect entry attempts or the mail box setup itself was incorrect,or another idea is that there might have been a crossed line, the OP can let us know if he has any other reason tho think thats the case.

At any rate we're getting the CSRs manager to do a troubleshooting refresh so that we can make sure a hack has occured before starting to go down that road.

Chris
^CB

Vodafone staff. You'll see me on the @vodafoneNZ twitter account and Vodafone NZ facebook page signing off as ^CB

freitasm

BDFL - Memuneh
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#675051 21-Aug-2012 12:11

That makes sense... The mailbox being locked up after a few incorrect PIN entries, and the help desk staff incorrectly saying "it was hacked" when it was just the security feature kicking in.