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Google Voice Fixes Security Flaw, Almost
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."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Hackers, meet the Phreakers, Phreakers, meet the Hackers. Have fun!!
And I refer you to how to properly use sic, which is to say: It should be enclosed in square brackets, not in parenthesis.
Gosh, now I can feel smugly superior, too!
Not the google actually does, but you'll find plenty of VoIP setups that you can trick this way.
Its too simple to configure these setups to trust outside caller id info (which is trivial to fake since most of the time no one checks to make sure the info being sent is allowed from the line) and to use that info for authentication to voicemail automatically.
Its kind of like considering * a trusted host for rsh/rcp and when you turn a nice pointy/clicky gui over to a random person to admin your phone system, it ends up happening pretty often. Save money right up till you get that massive phone bill cause some guy was bouncing calls off you.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Not a typo, this article was merely written by the brilliant minds that brought us the Nintendo Wii
If sharing a song makes you a pirate, what do I have to share to be a ninja?
Where expensive is an arbitrary number between the inability to use an internet chat program and proprietary price gouging?
That, or "expensive international calls" is a euphemism for "phone sex".
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
I took down google voice with my captain crunch whistle.
Oh no you diint!
Not a typo, this article was merely written by the brilliant minds that brought us the Nintendo Wii
It had to be 'Wii', because 'We' is heavily encumbered, and 'Wi' would be pronounced like "Why", which is not a question they want to be asking - some other video game manufacturer will be happy to tell you.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It's the same service as Grand Central, which I've been using for 2-3 years now.
The basic idea is that you can hide all of your various phone numbers behind your Google Voice number. People call it and all of your phones (or the ones you have configured for that caller or at that time of day) will ring. Whichever one you pick up gets the call, and you will be told the person's name and given the choice to actually answer or bounce them to voicemail.
On the other side, you can use the web interface to have Google Voice call one of your phones and connect you with any phone number you give it. This is free, except for international calls. I don't use this too often, but it helps when you don't want people to find out one of your 'real' phone numbers.
The best part is that you can control incoming calls essentially with a spam filter. When people call you they have to state their name (the first time), which plays when you answer their calls. You can decide to bounce certain numbers straight to voicemail every time or give them a 'this number is not in service' message.
Google Voice added the following features that I like:
- Voicemails are transcribed, not very well but you can usually get the jist quickly without listening
- SMS is now forwarded as well, which was pretty much the major short-coming of Grand Central.
Overall, I really like it, and the service quality has been quite good. The main thing is that it is not a phone service in itself, but something you use with other phone services.
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.
This has been true since early days of Grand Central. I really hope they would fix this, but I doubt they will. Basically, everyone knows you can't trust Caller ID, , but they chose to do so anyway. I bet this was a business decision to allow easier use of the voicemail in order to compete with cellphone provider voicemail.
-Em
RelevantElephants: A Somatic WebComic...
Whee... would have done
www.Buy-Proxy.com - A "buyer-driven" global marketplace.
It's just some data that can be faked. As long as you have a trunk line like T1 to the Telco, or something similar, you are responsible to generate the Caller ID instead of the Telco.
So what's so surprising here? It just doesn't work to use it for authentication.
What does it take to get into Grand Central? I've been signing up over and over for a year now.
Even better, I don't have to press 1 any more to answer a call! So annoying when using a headset and your phone is tucked away somewhere.
Wasn't the CIP device destroyed? Is there a second CIP device that Starkwood was keeping in reserve? And what the hell does Google have to do with anything?
It is nice that you can turn off Call Presentation now. I wish, as I did with Grand Central, that the level of configurability would get way higher. Things like having certain people's calls go through without the Call Presentation thing.
It would also be nice if the system was complex enough to understand voice commands in addition to the numbers. The biggest pain I have is answering a call on my iPhone requires changing over to keypad mode every time to hit '1'. However, it pays for itself when I manage to avoid a call that I really didn't want to take.
Another sweet feature: the contacts are now held in your Google Contacts stuff (shared with Gmail, which caused me a few initial problems), so that you can sync that up with the iPhone (and I presume other phones somehow) as well. It's really becoming a Googlefied world.
Things like having certain people's calls go through without the Call Presentation thing.
You can do that! It's configurable by groups.
You're an idiot trying to fish for mod points by mentioning something vaguely relevant despite the fact you have no idea what it is, if you knew what it was and what this is you would know that it wouldn't work at all since it's completely different. Using a blue box here is equivalent to using a brick to access a locked user account on Windows XP simply because a brick can break a glass window.
If only Google would add number porting...
They talked about it for ages with Grand Central ...
The odds of your unactivated card falling into the hands of somebody who has the ability to modify the Caller ID info is most likely pretty slim.
And having a card fall into the hands of somebody spoofing Caller ID to activate them means said person is doing some serious criminal shit. In other words, having the card activated is the least of anybody's worry.
In other words, security is a balance. Activating your card from a "home phone" just weeds out casual criminals who stumble on your mail--not hard-core people doing this shit for a living.
Right, this is what I meant by having Google Voice call one of your numbers to patch you through. To the recipient, it appears to come from your Google Voice phone number.
There is also an iPhone app to automate this, but I don't think it works with Google Voice (just Grand Central). Hopefully Google will come out with something official or the app gets updated.
I don't use it that often, because I typically don't care if someone gets my real number. However, when calling car dealers it's invaluable.
Great, so don't pay him for his post. But—unlike the slashdot "editors"—he's not actually asking to be paid for his postings, so that's kind of a big difference.