Monday, May 21, 2001

New Bell Canada service: free calls According to an articles in *The Toronto Star* and *Wired* (http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,43967,00.html), Bell Millennium payphones users were given a rare treat last week: free access to Telehop's Dialaround low-charge long distance service. A glitch in the access software allowed anyone who entered 10-10-620 into a Bell Millennium pay phone to make unlimited free calls to anywhere in the world. Word spread quickly on Internet newsgroups, until people were literally camping out by the phones to wait their turn. It is interesting that the hole was known by the public for 6 days before it was fixed. Why the delay? Did it take 6 days to discover the problem? According to the article, Bell didn't start monitoring the network closely until [a] store containing the pay phones called to complain that the crowds were disrupting their business. I also wonder if Bell and Telehop knew about the problem for some time, but did not count on the exploit being described on the Internet. Dave Isaacs [Also noted by Aaron PooF Matthews. PGN] ["Dave Isaacs" via risks-digest Volume 21, Issue 41] 0:00 # G!