Slashdot Mirror
Security In Voice Over IP Converged Networks
dotslash writes: "This article at Internet Telephony Magazine has a very interesting analysis of security issues created by converging data and telephony networks with VoIP: "When the phenomenon of "convergence" between telephony and Internet started, it also brought closer the world of the phreaker and the hacker. VoIP brings all this to the next level. Unfortunately, the security inherent in VoIP solutions is equivalent to that of the early Internet: Non-existent.""
Only a couple of months ago, we finished a roll-out for IP phones. The client was a bank and security was the top consideration. In essence, whatever worked to secure data, worked to secure VoIP. The problem in general is not with the technology; it is with the "old school" PBX designers and engineers.
I have met quite a few people, extremely skilled with PBXs, who view data networks as a black box and have almost no knowledge or methodology to work with products that use them, much less secure them.
When these people grasp the realities of the new, converged, technology, we can expect to see quite a few changes both on VoIP systems' built-in security and fail-safe operation.
My university just recently overhauled the on-campus phone system. They replaced the old (working) system with IP phones. They did the whole job in a matter of months, despite very vocal opposition by the CS department faculty. These Cisco IP phones cost $700 a pop.
They hooked the central hub of the phone system up to generators in the event of a power failure. Unfortunately, all our phones depend on switches and routers scattered throughout campus, and the phones themselves have DC power adapters. In the event of a power outage, the central hub will stays on-line, but all the phones throughout campus go out!
When asked what students and faculty should do in the event of an emergency during a power outage, our IT services department responded, "Try to find someone with a cell phone!"
Worse yet, switches have a mean time to failure of 100,000 hours. With 2,000 switches throughout campus, sections of the phone system go out once every 50 hours. The current average time for IT services to replace a down switch is 2 weeks.
These phone have web servers, and a few other goodies. I'm just waiting until an IP phone worm takes out our entire campus's network and telecommunications infrastructure.
Finally, something I know about! This is what I do for a living.
The fact of the matter is that most of the large emerging packet telephony networks are not being deployed in enterprises, but in the carrier networks -- telephone companies around the world are replacing their old circuit-switched back-haul networks for packet-switched networks, either ATM or IP. These are private networks which are not open to the general public, and so do not have the same risks as, say running VoIP on the internet would. Sure, the telcos still need to watch out for attackers... it's just that you've raised the bar far enough that 'script kiddies' would have a tough time.
The article also has an over-simplified view of the effort needed to tap an IP phone call. Even if the user were able to mirror any port on the network onto his computer, he still has the extremely hard task of figuring out which port(s) he needs to monitor -- they typically change on a per-call basis, and the user would actually have to mirror two ports (one for each direction of speech) in order to get the entire call. Now, it can be done, but it's difficult. And, it's made even harder because the signalling path (the communication link that handles setting up calls) is usually encrypted, so it becomes impossible to distinguish among calls.