Hacking of 911 Emergency Phone System
There are no details of what the “hacking” was, or whether it was anything more spoofing the Caller ID:
Randal T. Ellis, 19, allegedly impersonated a caller from the Lake Forest home shortly before midnight March 29, saying he had murdered someone in the house and threatened to shoot others.
Allegedly hacking into systems maintained by America Online and Verizon, Ellis used the couple’s names, which he had confirmed earlier in a prank call to their home, authorities said.
[…]
Authorities spent more than six months tracking down Ellis before arresting him in Mukilteo last week. He was in the process of being extradited to California on Tuesday and was charged with “false imprisonment by violence” and “assault with an assault weapon by proxy.” The crimes carry a possible prison sentence of 18 years.
Elizabeth Henderson, the assistant Orange County district attorney in charge of the economic-crimes unit, said Ellis’ scheme was “fairly difficult to unravel.”
Wombat • October 19, 2007 7:36 AM
I don’t think this can be just spoofing caller ID. That’s fairly trivial, but to my understanding 911 doesn’t use CallerID, it uses ANI (Automatic Number Identification) which is a lower-level protocol.
I haven’t heard of ANI being spoofed before.