Linux-Based Phone System Phones Home

An anonymous reader writes to let us know that users of Trixbox, a PBX based on Asterisk, recently discovered that the software has been phoning home with statistics about their installations. It's easy enough to disable, and not particularly steathy (beyond encrypting the data sent back), but customers in the forum are annoyed at not having been informed of the reporting. Trixbox is owned by Fonality, which makes customized PBXs (again based on Asterisk) for paying customers.

Comments

Re:eh?

[arth1]

So it's sending back some generic data with no personal information so they can do a best estimate of where they need to be spending their time.

What's the problem here?

First of all, your claim isn't true. Here's what it currently sends back the output of:

/usr/bin/perl /var/adm/bin/recognition.pl
/bin/uname -r
/bin/rpm -q -a
/sbin/lspci -vn
/usr/sbin/dmidecode
/usr/sbin/wanrouter version
/usr/sbin/wanrouter hwprobe verbose
/usr/sbin/asterisk -V
/bin/cat /etc/redhat-release
/bin/cat /etc/trixbox/trixbox-version
/bin/cat /etc/trixbox/.regData

Note that it sends the registration data on every request. Which means the other data isn't anonymous.

But, and this is much more alarming, it also can execute arbitrary commands. It connects to the remote server, asks it what to execute, and then executes it. That's VERY scary, no matter what is currently collected. Imagine a hacker getting access to the server customers connect to.

Re:Stats are useful

[ScrewMaster]

Nah ... it's just that people don't bother to read what's in front of them. Had there been a big blurb during the software install that proclaimed "we collect anonymous usage statistics" nobody would have cared, but because it wasn't made sufficiently obvious people think there's something devious going on.

Make your own Linux-based PBX system

[compumike]

We did it ourselves and saved >$100/month for a small business. Just use Asterisk (free and open source), buy some inexpensive but full-featured phones like the Grandstream GXP-2000 (about $80 each), and get a termination provider like VoicePulse Connect for Asterisk ($11/month for four simultaneous channels, free incoming, and below $0.01/min for most outgoing). It took some work to get it all set up and working properly, but now is actually more reliable than the analog phones ever were. (We had phone company issues every few months... just awful.)

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