Slashdot Mirror

gardel writes "Google appears to have fixed a significant security hole in its two-week-old Voice calling service though some vulnerabilities remain. Until about 7pm PDT Tuesday, an unauthorized party could use a SIP device to spoof a phone number attached to a Google Voice account to call the Google Voice number, giviing the spoofer access to greetings and voicemail, and the ability to make outbound calls, including expensive international calls. Though spoofing via SIP is no longer possible, continued existence of some vulnerability was still apparent Tuesday night. Voxilla was able to set the caller ID of a PBX extension to a mobile number attached to Google Voice account and call in, using a business VoIP trunk, to gain access."

gardel writes "Google appears to have fixed a significant security hole in its two-week-old Voice calling service though some vulnerabilities remain. Until about 7pm PDT Tuesday, an unauthorized party could use a SIP device to spoof a phone number attached to a Google Voice account to call the Google Voice number, giviing the spoofer access to greetings and voicemail, and the ability to make outbound calls, including expensive international calls. Though spoofing via SIP is no longer possible, continued existence of some vulnerability was still apparent Tuesday night. Voxilla was able to set the caller ID of a PBX extension to a mobile number attached to Google Voice account and call in, using a business VoIP trunk, to gain access."

phoneboy writes "By the end of next week, Voice over IP providers must advise all subscribers of any 911 service limitations and get "affirmative acknowledgment" that customers understand that VoIP 911 service is not the same as landline 911 by July 29. What happens if the customers don't affirm? The FCC isn't saying."

gardel writes "The open-source PBX is popular, powerful and affordable. But setting up and maintaining Asterisk in its distributed form is a technical challenge for even the most accomplished of geeks. Now, Voxilla reports, several new companies (more than 60, at last count), smelling a good business opportunity, offer simplified graphical front-ends for Asterisk. And more are on the way."

gardel writes "The open-source PBX is popular, powerful and affordable. But setting up and maintaining Asterisk in its distributed form is a technical challenge for even the most accomplished of geeks. Now, Voxilla reports, several new companies (more than 60, at last count), smelling a good business opportunity, offer simplified graphical front-ends for Asterisk. And more are on the way."

dsginter writes "It looks like Asterisk isn't the only open source PBX game in town anymore. sipX, as the name implies, is a SIP-only PBX project released under the LGPL. A noteworthy feature is the inclusion of an out-of-the-box web-based management console. Read more about the release over at Voxilla."

phoneboy writes "There was much progress in the VoIP world in 2004, though not as much as Voxilla predicted exactly one year ago. Will 2005 accelerate the pace of change? We at Voxilla think so. In our One Look Back, Two Steps Forward article, we take a peek back at our predicitions we made in 2004 and don the swami cap as we look boldly into the near future of the phone."

JamesB writes "Voxilla reports that two major Voice-over-IP providers, VoicePulse and Vonage have announced plans for Video-over-IP. Their competitor Packet8 has already been offering this service for several months."

phoneboy writes "According to this news story on Voxilla.com, a number of VoIP service providers have experienced higher-than-normal call volumes today. The calls were traced to mostly Democratic volunteers making calls in key battleground states."

phoneboy writes "According to this news story on Voxilla.com, a number of VoIP service providers have experienced higher-than-normal call volumes today. The calls were traced to mostly Democratic volunteers making calls in key battleground states."

bkw.org writes "Today Digium released DUNDi which can be used with the Asterisk Open Source PBX for p2p call routing. Digum has also released a whitepaper (pdf) on DUNDi so others can implement this new technology into their products and give VoIP a push into the mainstream." Voxilla also has a story.

gardel writes "Voxilla reports that a VoIP price war was declared today. An announcement that AT&T would drop its prices for its CallVantage Service from $34.99 to $29.99 per month was followed quickly by an announcement that Vonage would drop the price on its unlimited calling plan to $25 a month from the previous $29.99. Analysts say the price cuts show the VoIP market is not only competitive, but it's serious."

gardel writes "Voxilla reports that a VoIP price war was declared today. An announcement that AT&T would drop its prices for its CallVantage Service from $34.99 to $29.99 per month was followed quickly by an announcement that Vonage would drop the price on its unlimited calling plan to $25 a month from the previous $29.99. Analysts say the price cuts show the VoIP market is not only competitive, but it's serious."

phoneboy writes "Voxilla is running a piece I wrote on security issues present in Voice over IP. While an increasing number of people are ditching their ILEC in favor of using Voice over IP from companies like Vonage, VoicePulse, Packet8, and Broadvox Direct, there are a number of potential security issues to be aware of. Is VoIP secure enough to replace the PSTN as we know it?"

phoneboy writes "Voxilla is running a piece I wrote on security issues present in Voice over IP. While an increasing number of people are ditching their ILEC in favor of using Voice over IP from companies like Vonage, VoicePulse, Packet8, and Broadvox Direct, there are a number of potential security issues to be aware of. Is VoIP secure enough to replace the PSTN as we know it?"

gardel writes "So everyone's top-tech predictions for 2004 says it will be the year of VoIP. What does that really mean? This may narrow it down. Here's Voxilla's list of the top-10 advances and trends in the world of VoIP. On the list: VoIP and cellular converges, IP phones take over, Chinese and Mexican phone numbers come to the U.S., Asterisk hits it big. What would you add?"

Sit back, read Slashback. Tonight, (another) revision to the "Hidden Agenda" collegiate games contest, torrent files for the new Mandrake release, and the by turns heated-and-cool responses to Forbes' unfriendly description of the FSF -- for attempting to protect their copyrights -- as Linux's "hit men." Read on below for the details.

Hey, this approach works for the New York Post ... digidave writes "The fallout from Dan's Linux's Hit Men article on Forbes.com has pushed Forbes.com into putting up a discussion board, where Dan [Lyons] has posted his response"

And unmadindu writes "FSF's Bradley Kuhn has responded to the Forbes article ( reported earlier at Slashdot). Read the short, but to-the-point response at Linux Today." Kuhn's response is remarkable in its restraint.

Reader Waldo Jaquith sent the text of Lyon's first posting; an excerpt serves to illustrate its tone:

"Of course the Free Software Foundation is entitled to enforce its GNU General Public License (GPL), just as other organizations are entitled to enforce their copyrights and licenses. My article simply points out that the paradoxical effect of these "enforcement actions" (FSF's term) may be to impede the adoption of Linux. By demanding that licensees publish source code for their own "derivative work" code (in addition to the Linux they're using) the FSF is, in effect, charging a royalty that approaches 100% of the value of the licensee's product."

Some of the postings in response are very impressive; I especially like this one.

Dragonfly Forum Logs are scintillating reading. drdink writes "SlashNET would like to thank Matthew Dillon and everyone who attended the Dragonfly BSD Q&A forum session. Logs are available both in text and HTML formats."

You get to keep your base. Stealthgirl writes "The Hidden Agenda Game Development Contest, which received quite a bit of interest but also a lot of flak for its IP rules, has adapted the rules to appease those who were griping on sites like Slashdot. Check out this post for more info." Up to the entrants to decide if they like the rules of any contest, of course.

Leech friendly, with public Mandrake 9.2 torrents. An anonymous reader writes "Public torrents for the first two of the Mandrake 9.2 ISOs are up (I and II). Anybody cares to share the third?"

Sir? It's reality calling, on line two, from Anywhere. Marcelo Rodriguez (gardel on Slashdot), editor of Voxilla.com, writes: "We've posted the complete text of Federal Judge Mike Davis' ruling in Vonage v. Minnesota Public Utilities Commission on Voxilla.com. ... It's pretty much a slam dunk for Vonage and VoIP. Judge Davis wrote that Congress mandates that 'that information services such as those provided by Vonage must not be regulated by state law.' He also wrote that 'State regulation would effectively decimate Congress's mandate that the Internet remain unfettered by regulation.'"

Vick writes "Two 'Bad Boys' of internet audio, MP3.com's Michael Robertson and Kazaa's Niklas Zenstrom, are done taking on the recording industry. Now their big fight is with the telephone companies and, apparently, one another. In one corner is Zenstrom's Skype, a software-only VoIP product that uses its own protocol and is banking on the huge popularity of Kazaa for its success. In the other corner is Robertson's SIPPhone.com, trying to simplify VoIP, and using the standard SIP protocol, to try to bring internet telephony to the masses. In this Voxilla.com interview, Robertson talks about the future of VoIP and minces no words in explaining why Zenstrom and the Kazaa boys have got it all wrong." (Last month, we posted about Skype.)

An anonymous reader submits: "Voxilla reports that the FCC will announce Friday that 'a federal court has issued a permanent injunction against a recent ruling by the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission to regulate Voice over IP provider Vonage as a telephone company.' This is a significant move towards stopping recent movement by states to regulate VoIP -- most notably, California vs. VoicePulse and Wisconsin vs. Packet8."

Vick points to this story at Voxilla.com, which says that "A California Public Utilities Commissioner has called for public hearings on the agency's recent demand that Voice over IP service providers apply and be certified as full-fledged telephone companies." The anti-regulation arguments, though, mostly seem to hinge on timing and protocol -- I wish more objectors would argue that there are already too many phone regulations, instead of seeming to promise a boatload more captured users (dollars) if we just let VoIP develop for a few years before unchaining the regulators.