We would all like to think that VoIP telecommunications is going to take over as the future of telephones.� However, a small business in Australia isn’t too keen on the service, as they have just received a bill for $120,000 after hackers cracked into their service and somehow managed to make 11,000 international calls in just under 2 days.

The business only found out that they had been hacked after they received the invoice through the door asking for the money.� The hack says a lot about the VoIP service and its future in the global market.� If it can become so easily compromised then certain worries will start to emerge from the service’s users.

Detective Sergeant Jamie McDonald has said that the older PBX systems were the real target but the illegal access and hacking of more modern VoIP devices was on the rise and was something that needed to be given some serious attention.

McDonald said that, “Business operators should invest in appropriate security software to protect their communication systems. Most businesses are prepared to install firewalls on their computers but fail to extend that level of security to their phone systems.”

“This latest reported incident is a timely reminder for businesses to be prudent with their phone system security, in particularly to know exactly what services are enabled and to change their passwords on a regular basis,” McDonald continued.

McDonald has pointed out that although the crimes were becoming more commonplace, the amount charged on the bill is extremely excessive and did come as quite a shock.� It is being thought that the reason behind the high charge are that a service provider is claiming to offer cheap international calls and is routing the calls through the likes of the small business in Australia that then receives the ridiculously high bill.� Another option that the police are investigating is that the hackers were fraudsters that were using the access to use a fake call centre.

McDonald went on to explain how more businesses and VoIP users should spend more time and money looking into securing their access to the service as something like this could happen again to anyone.

VoIP services such as Skype have been struggling in the market recently and have been attempting to attract new customers to aid their diminishing position in the market.� However, the services offer quite attractive prices and the VoIP services could one day take over from what we now consider traditional telephone-ing.� They need to look at security a little more, though, as other such attacks like this one could be the last nail in the coffin of VoIP, which would be a shame, as we would be losing a cheap way of making calls around the globe.