BRITISH TELECOM has admitted to the government that two of its employees
tampered with the public telephone network for personal gain, raising doubts
about the security of its network against fraud.
In a phone-in competition earlier this year, British Airways offered 200
flights to New York on Concorde for just 拢10. To avoid overloading the
telephone network, BT used a system called call-gapping. This filters calls on a
supposedly random basis, allowing only a tiny fraction through. Of 30 million
calls, only 500 were connected鈥攖wo of which came from BT鈥檚 own engineers
(Technology, 1 March, p 18).
In July, BT completed an internal investigation and turned over the results
to trade and industry minister Barbara Roche. In a letter to Labour MP Tam
Dalyell, who was pursuing the issue, Roche has now confirmed that the two
engineers were able to tamper with the system. 鈥淚n the case of the Concorde
promotion, it was possible for the few employees concerned鈥o increase the
chance of particular calls getting through.鈥� The engineers have since been
sacked.
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BT has made no public announcement and still maintains that its network is
secure against fraud and other serious abuses. 鈥淭he fact that we were able to
identify the culprits within hours justifies this confidence,鈥� insists a
spokesman. But Richard Cox, of Mandarin Technology in Penarth, Wales, who is
investigating cases where BT customers claim they were billed for calls they
never made, says: 鈥淚f the network is secure, why didn鈥檛 BT spot the abuse before
outsiders questioned the names on the winners鈥� list?鈥�