Hackers penetrated the firewall and voice mail of the phone of a Canadian businessman and in the space of 10 days managed to make hundreds of phone calls to Bulgaria on his account. By January 2, 2009, Alan Davidson will have to pay 53 321 Canadian dollars (30 622 euro) for calls he never made, as reported by Winnipeg Free Press.

Davidson, owner of HUB Computer Solutions, realised that something wasn't quite right when he kept on receiving messages on his screen reading "feature 36". When he finally called the telecommunications company Manitoba Telecom Services (MTS), he learned of the the scam and the debt he had to pay off, accumulated between November 21 and December 5.

"I will have to pay for everything out of my own pocket which means I will have to fire one of my workers to be able to afford it. However it is apparent that something is totally out of order and MTS were supposed to notice this and inform me on time" said Davidson, whose monthly account usually does not exceed a hundred dollars.

MTS released a media statement saying they will take responsibility and cover damages if the equipment is theirs. But should the equipment be personal property of the client - as it is in the case of Davidson - everything will have to be paid for by the victim. Apart from that, MTS said it does not have the technological resource that credit card companies have for instance, and it can therefore not constantly monitor accounts and inform clients if there is a discrepancy or a sharp increase in phone traffic.

Davidson turned out to have used a four character password, something that is a walk in the park to hack for professional crackers. Davidson said he believed the culprits did not do this to burden others with their phone bill, but in order do business without being detected by the police.

Davidson's advise to all system administrators was to block all international calls to avoid ending up in a similar situation.