Hacker Taps Into Freeway Call Box--11,733 Times

An enterprising hacker reached out and touched someone 11,733 times in August--from a freeway emergency call box in Orange County.

A computer that monitors the county’s emergency call boxes attributed 25,875 minutes of calls to the mysterious caller who telephoned people in countries across the globe, according to a staff report prepared for the Orange County Transportation Authority.

“This is well over the average of roughly 10 calls per call box,” the report noted.

About 1,150 bright yellow call boxes have been placed along Orange County’s freeways to connect stranded motorists to the California Highway Patrol. But the caller charged all his calls to a single box on the shoulder of the Orange (57) Freeway.

The hacker apparently matched the individual electronic serial number for the call box to its telephone number. It took an investigation by the transit authority, and three cellular communications firms to unravel the mystery, the report stated.

Officials with the transit authority’s emergency call box program were not available to comment on the cost of the phone calls or to say how they would be paid.

But the report assured that “action has been taken to correct this problem. It should be noted that this is the first incident of this type in the five-year history of the program.”