The municipal board of Newfane, a small town in rural Vermont have found themselves in a spot of bother after hackers racked up international phone call bills of over $3000, for calls no one in the town had actually made.
Initially, the bill was actually a whopping $25,000, only to be brought down by Fairpoint, the phone company, reports the Brattleboro Reformer.
"The good news is our telephone bill is not $25,000," said Shannon Meckle, an admin assistant on the Select Board. "It was at one point. Fairpoint adjusted it down to $3,359. So, apparently they [the hackers] were hacking into our voicemail system and calling into the Dominican [Republic] several times."
Newfane, Vermont; credit: Doug Kerr
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Meckle added that even though it seems clear that a hack of sorts had taken place, there was little that could be done to prove inconclusively that the calls had not been made within the town itself.
"Because any which way you go in to see who did it, it looks like we did it," she said, adding also that the Vermont State Police had been informed of the hacking crimes. "They said basically the same thing; it's chasing ghosts because you can't figure out who made them. It looks like we made them."
Meckle also noted that steps had been taken to increase security and ensure that future hacks could not take place, but also said that the bill of $3000 and upwards could not be revised or scrapped because it was the lowest international rate offered by Fairpoint.
The news that the town may have to shoulder the burden of paying the cost of the phone calls did not go down well with residents.
Newfane, Vermont; credit: Doug Kerr
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Local resident Ken Estey suggested the board defer payment until the issue could be explored in greater detail, and was left unimpressed at the likelihood that the townspeople would have to stump up the cost.
"That strikes me as unacceptable," he said. "And it seems to me that further steps could be undertaken to continue to press a phone company that ultimately should shoulder that responsibility."
In the meantime, the Select Board voted to pay $129.37 of the bill for now, as well as submitting a letter from the town attorney. But as the calls were made on disposable phones, to numbers no longer in use, there is little the board can do by way of proving that the town has been victim to an unusual, but clearly very effective hacking crime.
The news is a blow for the small town of Newfane, which sits to the east of the Green Mountain and Finger Lakes National Forests. With a population of less than 2,000, the bill is a bitter pill to swallow, though residents will hope that after submitting details to the state authorities they may be spared the burden of paying for the illegal phone calls. Meanwhile, others suggested that if the case is not resolved in a satisfactory matter for the town, it should consider changing to another phone service provider.
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Sources: Brattleboro Reformer; AP News