Props of the day go to Tim Williams, the 19 year from Grafton who devised a crafty little exploit to get free web access on his prepaid mobiles. Both telcos have since learned about the hole, but hey, nice work Tim. We salute you!
The basic trick stems from the ability to access Youtube.com and Bing.com (and social sites like Facebook.com) for free, with no credit. What Williams did was create a sub-domain on his own site that included youtube.com, and direct traffic through there via an OpenVPN to encrypt traffic. Booya.
Optus has since closed the hole, and Vodafone says this is related to the known glitch that it’s switching off on July 8. [ZDNet]