Telephone hacking (toll fraud)
Taking control of a company's telephone system to place premium-rate calls for the attacker's benefit, leaving the victim with the carrier's bill, which the cyber policy covers as a specific item.
Telephone hacking means taking control of a company's private branch exchange, voice over IP system or business line, often protected by a default code, to generate masses of calls to premium-rate or international numbers from which the attacker collects a share of the revenue. The attack typically unfolds over a weekend or at night, when nobody is watching, and the victim discovers the loss when its carrier's bill arrives, which can reach tens of thousands of euros within hours. The carrier contract almost always makes the customer liable for these calls, since they were placed from its equipment. Telephone fraud cover, found in many cyber policies under a sublimit, reimburses those charges. It belongs to the family of fraud covers, like payment fraud, because the harm is a direct loss of money rather than a loss of data. For the underwriter, the questionnaire focuses on simple controls: changing default codes, blocking unneeded international destinations, alert thresholds with the carrier.
The international association fighting communications fraud estimated global telecom fraud losses in 2023 at about 38.95 billion dollars, around 2.5 percent of industry revenue, with the hijacking of corporate phone systems among the most common methods.
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