Realty World - Sales and Rentals in Charlotte, NC

From Somalia with Love

Well, here's a new one for me. Here's how my Monday morning started yesterday; Picture this: I received a call from our long distance provider notifying me that our system had been hacked and multiple toll calls had been made to Somalia through our remote access feature (which has now been disabled!!) totaling almost $1,000!!

After several calls to our vendor with our phones, and checking call logs, we determined that the calls were coming from a number in Georgia from a Food Service company. I contacted them directly and it seems that we are one of several companies that have been hacked via their system. Apparently, someone had gotten into their system and were using it to go into other phone systems around the country and hack their systems and making those toll calls to Africa.

It was a nice wake up call to me that our systems need firewalls and security in place to prevent these types of things. We have changed every password and access code in the building, disabled our international calling, and changed our procedures. Interesting how this world puts you in a defensive posture most of the time!

I hope this will help you to think about your own systems, passwords, firewalls, etc. and that you will analyze your system status.

Have a great week -- I'll be commenting on the foreclosure freeze in my next entry this week.

Tony

Posted - 10/19/2010

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