Voice mail hacker breaks into system

Callers trying to reach Georgia College & State University August 19 may have gotten a different answer than they expected.

Rather than the regular voice mail message, instead they may have heard someone encouraging them to vote Republican in the August 20 primary.

According to Executive Assistant to the President Max Allen, someone “illegally placed a recording” on GC&SU’s voice mail system. The recording said “This is the city of Milledgeville. We encourage all residents to get out and vote. Vote Republican. It’s the best choice for the community.”

Allen said the message was discovered around 4:45 p.m. when a reporter from The Union Recorder called to inquire about a problem with the voice mail system.

“The reporter told me they were receiving numerous calls at the newspaper complaining that someone on the GC&SU voice mail system was encouraging people to vote Republican in the next day’s primary election,” said Allen.

According to Public Safety Director Ken Vance, the message was changed by the caller 4:19 p.m.

“The GTA (Georgia Technology Authority) and DOAS (Department of Administrative Services) caught it quickly and prevented it from being much worse on Tuesday morning,” said Vance.

Allen said the message was changed back to the original voice mail system by 5:30 p.m.

It is uncertain exactly how the person was able to get into the system.

“We are not sure how this happened,” said Allen. “We do know that the person was a male and knew what he was doing. The matter is still under investigation.”

Allen said there is not currently a suspect in the case.

“However,” he said, “our Public Safety Department, along with other state agencies, is seriously investigating this incident.”

Vance said two potential leads in this “who shot J.R.” type of case have come up empty and now the technical authority is to try to determine who was responsible. He said any information anyone has would be helpful.

It looks as though whoever is responsible may be in serious trouble if caught.

“It is a criminal offense,” said Vance.

He said such a crime may be punishable by “an excess of five years and probably a pretty hefty fine,” noting that the person has caused a lot of trouble, forcing the state to have to change its security codes.

“Somebody was pretty talented to get to the point where they were to do this,” said Vance.

GC&SU was not the only place affected by the caller.

“It appears that lines with voice mail through Georgia’s Department of Administrative Services were affected,” said Vance. “This included other government offices in Milledgeville, and not just GC&SU.”

Chief Information Officer Dr. Jim Wolfgang said the caller “hit places that outside people were likely to call,” including the main number to the campus.

However, not all GC&SU phone lines were tapped.

“Some GC&SU offices do not have voice mail on their phone lines, including the office of the president,” said Allen. “Those offices were not affected.”

Changes in security should hopefully eliminate future incidents like this one.

“The security network for the voice mail system has been changed,” said Allen.

Dr. Wolfgang said telephones were not considered a good target for these types of predators until recently.

“Things like the voice mail thing are like the graffiti of ten years ago,” he said. “In a lot of cases, what people think are pranks are really serious crimes. The bottom line is in today’s time we all have to be very, very careful. “

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Sep 6 2002. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry