Techistan » Asterisk

Understanding How 42 VoIP Hackers Made Money Before They Got Caught

omar shaikh — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 14:55:32 +0000

Edited by Suzanne Bowen. Romanian authorities disrupt huge hacking ring accused of stealing VoIP data from hacked servers, to place bogus calls to premium rate numbers.

What are premium rate numbers? They are telephone numbers for telephone calls in which special services are provided. The price for these calls is higher than normal calls. Examples of the special services might be adult chat lines, weather forecasts, competitions, or diplomatic services. In the USA, 1-900 is a typical NPA for premium rate numbers.

For UK, it is 0844, 0870 and 0871. Find out more about premium rate numbers on Wikipedia and PremiumRateNumber.org. More on the Romanian case …

Agence France Presse reported on Tuesday that 42 people were arrested in the sting, breaking up a network that was headed by two Romanians and that had caused more than $13.5 million in losses to firms in the U.S.A., Britain, South Africa, Italy and Romania.

The scheme involved compromises of Internet-based VoIP servers. (Read VoIPSA site for extensive information about voice over Internet security.)

VoIP hacking has become an increasing problem as more firms migrate to Internet-based telephony. There have been cases in which VoIP hackers have been prosecuted and increasing attention by vendors to vulnerabilities and attacks on VoIP platforms.

1. Venezuelan Edwin Andres Pena was sentenced to ten years in prison for hacking into telecommunications companies and pocketing more than one million dollars in the scam.

2. Skype for Android 3G was hacked in U.S.A. in October 2010. Users discovered their 3G was disabled as a result.

3. In October 2010, a Perth, Australia business was hit with a $120 000 bill after hackers exploited its VOIP server to place some 11 000 calls over 46 hours last year. Some say that federal law enforcement can do little to prosecute perpetrators of an offshore VOIP attack.

4. Read more on voIP hacking at Ethical Hacker, Hacking voIP, O’Reilly Media, Sniffing voice over IP with CAIN from IronGeek, and someone exposing how easy it is to strip voice over IP calls.

Participate in TMC University’s network security sessions during ITEXPO East Feb. 2-4, 2011 in Miami Beach, Florida.

Gigaset to Give Away a S675IP SIP/DECT Starter System to the Right Answer

omar shaikh — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 17:58:46 +0000

Just in from … VoIPUsersConference:

As we approach the US Thanksgiving holiday we are given pause to reflect upon our many blessings. While many of us exist in a wideband realm where clarity of voice leads to universal understanding, there remain a great many who suffer through the narrowband reality of the past. These poor folk suffer not only a startling lack of clarity, they are typically tethered, bound to their toil by wires.

Gigaset Communications aims to give a hand to some poor unfortunate soul, bestowing upon them the gift of clarity*. This gift takes the form of a Gigaset S675IP SIP/DECT starter system. To further aid in the mobility of the downtrodden they also offer the S79H expansion handset. These tools, HDSP capable…or HDVoice capable for the followers of Plcm….promise to uplift up their users with both clarity of voice and mobility of action.

Such outstanding clarity that they might understand The Words. However, such clarity will not be bestowed upon the idle or laggard. It will be granted only to the one who proves themselves most worthy at the appointed time. A question will be asked.

These gifts will be given to one of those who answer the question correctly. Look to the mailing list. Watch for the signs. Then be on the call Friday, November 26th. *For regulatory reasons this offer is restricted to North American listeners only.

Michael Graves
http://www.mstvp.com

Other free or giveaways listed on Techistan include GIS software, Turk Telecom’s offer of 1000 free minutes during Eid and AirTran offering free WiFi during winter holidays, and free English to Urdu dictionary online.

Asterisk Training 5 on Outgoing Trunks, Xlite and More in Urdu by Supertec.org Foundation

omar shaikh — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 21:12:36 +0000

Visit http://www.techistan.com/category/channels/asterisk-channels/ for more training in Urdu.

Asterisk Training 7, Applications, Context, Variables in Urdu by Supertec.org Foundation

omar shaikh — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 21:11:40 +0000

Visit http://www.techistan.com/category/channels/asterisk-channels/ for more training in Urdu.

Asterisk Training 6, Routing, Extensions, Syntax in Urdu by Supertec.org Foundation

omar shaikh — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 21:08:34 +0000

Visit http://www.techistan.com/category/channels/asterisk-channels/ for more training in Urdu.

Port, Bindaddr, Context, and More Asterisk Training 4 in Urdu by Supertec.org Foundation

omar shaikh — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 21:01:52 +0000

Visit http://www.techistan.com/category/channels/asterisk-channels/ for more training in Urdu.

Asterisk Training 3: Sip.conf, extension.conf, iax.conf in Urdu by Supertec.org Foundation

omar shaikh — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 20:59:41 +0000

Visit http://www.techistan.com/category/channels/asterisk-channels/ for more training in Urdu.

How to Install Asterisk (Training 2) in Urdu by Supertec.org Foundation

omar shaikh — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 20:56:45 +0000

Visit http://www.techistan.com/category/channels/asterisk-channels/ for more training in Urdu.

Introduction to Asterisk in Urdu by Supertec.org Foundation

Aaron Miller — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 20:52:27 +0000

Visit http://www.techistan.com/category/channels/asterisk-channels/ for more training in Urdu.

Cloudphones Expand your PBX with No Capital Expenditure

omar shaikh — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 16:46:42 +0000

JKL5 operates a “cloud-based” Asterisk IP PBX system for is customers. The advantage to a small or medium sized business (SMB) of using “remote hosted telephony” (RHT) is two-fold. Firstly, there is no capital expenditure; depending on your existing IT resources, you hypothetically don’t even need phones on the desks.

Secondly is availability to your customer; your “phone face” is important. When a customer calls, they must connect to your PBX. Even if they wind up in voicemail, few things are harder on your image than a phone that “just rings and rings” and is never answered. RHT systems are hosted in world-class data centres with tremendous bandwidth, survivability and scalability. Even if your office burns to the ground with a toxic waste truck parked on top, your customer calls are getting answered.

So you get a VoIP phone system that has the up time as though you’ve spent a bundle on CapEx, while your operation expenditures are easily kept to two-digit numbers. Its hard to loose.

One of our customers is using our PBX as a way to add more phones to his company without paying for an expensive upgrade of his leased and legacy PBX. When his lease is up, he’ll retire the old switch to a garbage can, migrate all his old phones to a new in-house Asterisk PBX. His Cloudphones extensions will be then brought in as well. RHT systems give SMBs a huge amount of flexibility.

Package: Remote Worker Services
Do you have “Road Warriors”, work-from-home call-centre agents or other “remote workers” that you need to connect? Set them up with a soft phone on their PC, or we’ll ship the a pre-configured desk phone. We then provide the PBX environment for them, and work with you to route the calls to and from your existing PBX so that it is completely invisible to your customers that your remote workers aren’t in your main office.

Package: Basic Business Services
If you want to go virtual office as some of our customers have, this is an ideal way to do it. You get all the features that an SMB needs without having to buy anything, beyond maybe a desk phone. Voice mail to email, music on hold, call transfer, 3-way calling, and more.

Package: Advanced Business Services
This is “Virtual Office With the Works”. You get everything in the “Basic Business Services”, plus IVR services, call queues, conference bridges, dial-by-name directories, and mobile phone simultaneous ring.

Package: SIP Gateway Service
So, you’ve got a contract for land lines that you can’t break. Your legacy office PBX doesn’t have the features you need to grow your business. You want the advantages of an RHT system, but want to keep things close to home at the same time. We can do that; your land lines, a gateway device, our PBX … instant VoIP environment. The only “danger” is if your internet connection drops, but with some careful planning, that can be minimized.

If you’d like more information on how you can leverage remote hosted telephony services in your enterprise, call us at +1.514-907-9429 (w) or +1.416-479-0632 (o).

Version Check:

DAHDI Linux version 2.3.0.1 fixes a regression in 2.3.0 that could result in audio quality problems

Asterisk 1.4.33 fixes issues with call recording, Caller ID, SIP Realtime and improves over-all call load management. It also fixes a problem where a missing audio file would result in queued calls being dropped.

Asterisk 1.6.2.9 has a series of non-critical house-keeping fixes, plus fixes issues with call recording. It also addresses a crash-bug associated with call queues and another with logging.

If you haven’t updated your Asterisk-based PBX in the past quarter, call us today!