One call to India cost $7,000.
Add the calls to the Philippines and Jordan, and the bill on the Duxbury public library phone line came to more than $15,000.
Hackers got into the computerized phone system at the Duxbury Free Library back in March. The FBI, among others, is now investigating.
The bad news: Selectmen shifted $13,000 in town funds this week to help pay the bill.
The good news: The town may not actually have to pay it.
“Someone, somehow, tapped into a phone at the library,” said Town Manager Richard MacDonald. “There’s a potential we will not have to pay. We’re still looking into this. We have no intent of paying any bills.”
MacDonald said the phone calls included one 30-hour connection to India that cost more than $7,000.
Duxbury Police Lt. Lewis Chubb said police received a report March 21 that there had been fraudulent use of the library phone system.
Manny Santos, director of engineering for CranCom Inc., then the library’s phone company, said a hacker or hackers gain access to the phone system through an employee’s voice mail. They then linked an library extension to a phone number elsewhere in the world so that calls from the outside phone passed through the library phone system and appeared to be coming from a library phone.
The library has since installed a new phone system.
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30-hour connection? These hackers weren't talking...they were using phones and modems for something.
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