Interested in maladministration. Estd. 2005
RTEs Sarah McInerney ? Fianna Fail?supporter? Anthony
Joe Duffy is dishonest and untrustworthy Anthony
Robert Watt complaint: Time for decision by SIPO Anthony
RTE in breach of its own editorial principles Anthony
Waiting for SIPO Anthony
Public Inquiry >>
Indymedia Ireland is a volunteer-run non-commercial open publishing website for local and international news, opinion & analysis, press releases and events. Its main objective is to enable the public to participate in reporting and analysis of the news and other important events and aspects of our daily lives and thereby give a voice to people.
Trump hosts former head of Syrian Al-Qaeda Al-Jolani to the White House Tue Nov 11, 2025 22:01 | imc
Rip The Chicken Tree - 1800s - 2025 Tue Nov 04, 2025 03:40 | Mark
Study of 1.7 Million Children: Heart Damage Only Found in Covid-Vaxxed Kids Sat Nov 01, 2025 00:44 | imc
The Golden Haro Fri Oct 31, 2025 12:39 | Paul Ryan
Top Scientists Confirm Covid Shots Cause Heart Attacks in Children Sun Oct 05, 2025 21:31 | imc
Human Rights in Ireland >>
Europe?s Wind Turbine Industry Faces Ruin at Hands of Coal-Powered Chinese, Experts Warn Mon Nov 24, 2025 11:21 | Will Jones
Europe's wind turbine industry faces ruin because the Chinese are using coal and state subsidies to massively undercut the European market, making turbines for a third of the cost, experts have warned.
The post Europe’s Wind Turbine Industry Faces Ruin at Hands of Coal-Powered Chinese, Experts Warn appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
Fake Famine Fears at the Collapsed COP30 Fuel Net Zero Fantasy Mon Nov 24, 2025 09:00 | Chris Morrison
Promising famines while pushing the 'Great Leap Forward' of Net Zero is just one reason why this deluded elite COP30 gathering crumbled under its own sinister contradictions, says the Daily Sceptic's Environment Editor.
The post Fake Famine Fears at the Collapsed COP30 Fuel Net Zero Fantasy appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
A Kind of Magic: Exposing the?Miraculous, Planet-Healing??Science? of World Kindness Day Mon Nov 24, 2025 07:00 | Steven Tucker
World Kindness Day claims kindness heals the planet, but really it's just schools and universities turning soppy fluff into pseudo-science ? Steven Tucker gives his take on the feel-good cult nobody asked for.
The post A Kind of Magic: Exposing the?Miraculous, Planet-Healing??Science? of World Kindness Day appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
News Round-Up Mon Nov 24, 2025 02:01 | Richard Eldred
A summary of the most interesting stories in the past 24 hours that challenge the prevailing orthodoxy about the ?climate emergency?, public health ?crises? and the supposed moral defects of Western civilisation.
The post News Round-Up appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
Rob Bates: ?Labour?s Asylum Plan isn?t ?Control? ? it?s an Amnesty!? Sun Nov 23, 2025 19:00 | Laurie Wastell
Labour's "tough" asylum crackdown? More like an amnesty that won't stop the boats or fix the Home Office mess, says Rob Bates of the Centre for Migration Control.
The post Rob Bates: ?Labour?s Asylum Plan isn?t ?Control? ? it?s an Amnesty!? appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
Lockdown Skeptics >>
Voltaire, international edition
Will intergovernmental institutions withstand the end of the "American Empire"?,... Sat Apr 05, 2025 07:15 | en
Voltaire, International Newsletter N?127 Sat Apr 05, 2025 06:38 | en
Disintegration of Western democracy begins in France Sat Apr 05, 2025 06:00 | en
Voltaire, International Newsletter N?126 Fri Mar 28, 2025 11:39 | en
The International Conference on Combating Anti-Semitism by Amichai Chikli and Na... Fri Mar 28, 2025 11:31 | en
Voltaire Network >>
dublin |
sci-tech |
news report
Thursday October 02, 2003 04:15
by hj - ex-tp
printable version
Digg this
del.icio.us
Furl
Reddit
Technorati
Facebook
Gab
Twitter
View Comments Titles Only
save preference
Comments (3 of 3)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3I don't have access to the online paper so this is just from memory.
The PBX system (a private telephone network, the telephone equivalent of a local area network) of the Department of Social and Family Affairs was "compromised" for a couple of months over the summer. It was their account manager in Eircom who spotted the anomalous usage patterns. Many of the phone calls were made over weekends and many were made to countries in Africa and East Asia. Apparently, the in-house bean-counters didn't pay too much attention to the figures even though the figure for July was over 200,000 when it would normally be around 120,000. IIRC, a facility for engineers to access the system remotely for maintenace and diagnostics was exploited. The fraud squad weren't too optimistic about succesfully tracking down and prosecuting the culprits as in the majority of such cases, the attack comes from outside the country.
Terminology: The Irish Times described the system as being "hacked". Hacking is when a programmer modifies programme code and a hacker would be someone who gets a buzz from learning about programming and computer systems and putting that knowledge to creative use.
Cracking is when she bypasses security to gain unauthorised access to a computer system. Phreaking is the name for the same activity applied to telephone networks.
"Hacking is when a programmer modifies programme code "
Unless you get paid for it, in which case it's called "software engineering"
to be more accurate, hacking is modifying a program's code without source-code/whatever from whoever wrote it.