Saint-Malo: Piracy of the town hall cost 80,000 euros

The town hall of Saint Malo revealed that its telephone switchboard was the victim of a piracy. The hackers made calls that cost the tens of thousands of euros to the municipality.

It was last May that the standard of the town hall of Saint-Malo was pirated but the municipality revealed this unfortunate incident only a few days ago. Hackers had taken control of the telephone system for 4 days and they did not hesitate to make calls abroad, leaving a rather substantial invoice. The town hall of the corsair city filed a complaint.

The telephone system of the town hall of Saint-Malo piraté

It was at a municipal council last week that the municipality of Saint-Malo revealed that its telephone system had been the prey of pirates last spring. This type of hacking, which experts call "phreaking", is more common than it is believed, since the telephone standards of companies or public establishments are not always well secured.


The pirates have thus succeeded in taking remote control of the communication system of the town hall to make calls in particular in Africa and Latin America. The amount of communications passed without the knowledge of the municipality amounts to 80,000 euros. "We are stunned, we who are extremely concerned about all expenses, to have to assume a bill of this amount," regretted the first deputy mayor of Saint-Malo, Michèle Lombardie, questioned by "France Bleu."

The town hall complains

"We have of course filed a complaint. We were also asked to account to our service provider because the detection systems to counter this type of piracy obviously did not work well "said Claude Renoult, Mayor of Saint Malo, quoted by the newspaper" The Country Malouin ".

During hacking, hackers succeed in entering the system and accessing administrative tools by usurping a password, usually. The liability of the provider can be incurred, if he has not changed the password established at the factory exit of the hardware or if the software has not been kept up to date for example.

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