bloody hell!

that one fat american

With imperical evidence available it remains difficult to fathom why Voice over IP security is poo-poo'd by tech vendors and OEMs (it was difficult to fathom before the evidence). I can only assume that the need for interception still outweights the need for integrity.

Just another fine example that nothing good ever came out of Texas - Just from its shape and location its obviously 'Merika's "Tail-Pipe"

The slight issue with VOIP is that it is a packet based data service just like http and all the other services available over networks these days. If you can engineer a situation so the packets get routed via your servers, what's to stop you injecting packets of your own into the data stream so that a sales call that started out as

"Hello, this is me calling from my company, please can I speak to Mr soandso?"

Turns into

"Hello, this is me calling from my company, Mr soandso is a complete <insert stream of obscenities here>"

VOIP is by no means secure, the only VOIP connection I'd trust is one that is betweeen company departments over a secured (and by that I mean encrypted with at least 256 3-DES/AES or similar) VPN and even then I'm not so sure.

My £0.02,

M.

Having personally stood with one foot in Texas and one in Louisiana, whilst only weighing 130-140 lbs at the time, I suggest you check out a map.

@Bloody_Yank - everyone knows that everything in Texas is "Biggest in the contiguous US", including its loons and dingbats (I don't know how they feel about this in Alaska and Hawaii).

In mitigation, can I offer Janis Joplin, Johnny Winter and Stevie Ray Vaughan as examples of fine Texan exports.

"Swatters use a combination of social engineering, phone phreaking prowess and computer hacking... Trowbridge furthered the scheme by mining personal information about the victims from a host of sources, including consumer reporting agencies, pizza delivery records and newspaper subscription records"

All this just to make hoax 999 calls? The word 'loser' comes to mind, but only because it's woefully insufficient.

When he gets out of his prison I expect his next jape will be to construct an elaborate three-barreled cannon that can fire objects in quick succession over a range of a mile with sufficient accuracy to hit a target about two feet wide. He will then spend days hiking looking for a suitable place to fire the cannon that overlooks residential areas and has enough leafy cover to hide him and the cannon. He will then construct rounds for the cannon of the exact size, weight and density that when a burst of three hits someone's door, it will sound exactly like someone's knocked on it. The resident will then come to the door and find no-one there, because Jason "Super Genius" Trowbridge will be safely hidden a mile away in some bushes sniggering his little heart out.

It's like one of Something Awful's anarchist BBS postings.

to keep that up for 5 years ... It is quite impressive.

What if some innocent person had gotten shot during one of these "pranks" ? It would be entirely possible, I think.

You really have to be a moron to get your laughs out of launching the cops on some innocent person. I would think that, should the cops burst down the door of these sad pranksters in the middle of the night and come in weapons ready, these losers wouldn't find it so funny.

They'd probably crap their pajamas.

I hope they get the maximum. Such behavior is beyond despicable.

@Pascal Monett

I think these pranksters should get a medal for bravery. And if someone would have got hurt, it would have been a fault of the offending cop, who with his superior officer should have been sent to the frying chair:D

... Like getting half a ton of manure, or a skip delivered whilst the "victim" was at work?

How 1980s and how things had changed.

I remember describing IRC as a partyline except with text.

I have to say that I agree with you on this one. Although for the sake of one-up-manship I'd suggest that the people who did this are cnuts*.

*Rearrange the letters into an (un)popular gynaecologial insult.