Re: [PLUG] VoIP

["William H. Magill" <magill@mcgillsociety.org>]

On 10 Jul, 2004, at 18:35, Paul wrote:

> What about security?  Could someone sniff the traffic and listen in on 
> your calls?  Is this less likely than someone using a scanner to 
> listen to cordless phone traffic?

VOIP is as easy to scan and sniff as any other IP service.
Just as susceptible to man-in-the-middle attacks.

But what is the occurrence of REAL IP based attacks?
(not email based crap aimed at Microsoft!)

I haven't seen any numbers, but because the level of sophistication 
needed to perpetrate them is quit high, one would assume that except on 
your "segment," IP packet sniffing is rare to extremely rare. If a 
router can be compromised, then you can do it fairly easily, but you 
first have to know which router and then to compromise it. (On your 
"segment," promiscuous mode would make sniffing such traffic trivial, 
probably even listening to it. Note that this is even possibly how one 
might implement "conference calling" on the cheap! )

It's not that it can't be done, but the people who are capable of doing 
it "easily" are going to want to listen in to Bill Clinton's calls to 
Monica, not yours to your girlfriend.

The only references I can find on Vonage's sites to "security" have to 
deal with "customer information on its network." Which is NOT your 
phone call... and especially NOT while the packets are outside "its 
network."

Since Vonage says nothing about encryption technologies being used, one 
would have to assume that a VoIP call across the internet is no more 
secure than any telnet connection ever was/is.
... Can you do VoIP via ssh or other Vlan technology? I would assume 
that it is possible, but it does not appear that Vonage touts such a 
capability.

T.T.F.N.
William H. Magill
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magill@mcgillsociety.org
magill@acm.org
magill@mac.com

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