Synopsis:  Blue Box #82: Asterisk & Skype security vulnerabilities, new VoIP security tools, VoIP steganography, VoIP security news and much, much more...

Welcome to Blue Box: The VoIP Security Podcast #82, a 47-minute podcast  from Dan York and Jonathan Zar covering VoIP security news, comments and opinions.   

Download the show here (MP3, 21MB) or subscribe to the RSS feed to download the show automatically. 

NOTE: This show was originally recorded on June 21, 2008.

You may also listen to this podcast right now:

Show Content:

• 00:20 - Intro to the show, contact information and how to provide comments.  Welcome to all the new listeners - and to all those listeners who have been here for so long!
• Programming notes:
  • Note about the production team – new special editions coming soon.
  • Note about URLs for the media files
• AST-2008-008 – Remote Crash Vulnerability in SIP channel driver when run in pedantic mode
• AST-2008-009 – Remote crash vulnerability in ooh323 channel driver
• Skype-SB-2008-003 – Skype File URI Security Bypass Code Execution Vulnerability
• New version of SIPvicious


• Sipflanker – tool to find SIP devices with web GUIs




• Discussion about VoIP Steganography (pointed to by Craig Bowser)


• Geeks Are Sexy: New Technology Hides Messages in Internet Phone Calls – and Switched: Spies to Use Skype to Send Secret Messages? – and The Register


• FierceVoIP: VoIP Security and the Circle of Trust pointing to Government Computer News: Careful with the call



• The Register: ‘Untraceable’ phone fraudsters eye your credit card



• SearchUnifiedCommunications: Disaster and recovery in the VoIP/IPT RFP



• Secure Computing: Voice tools under enemy fire



• VNUnet: A good VoIP application is worth paying for



• Ofcom confirms VoIP providers must provide access to 999 and 112



• Bogdan Materna’s blog is live
• Realtime Community: The Essentials Series:
  Messaging and Web Security
  Volume III


• Global Knowledge: On-Demand Webinar on VoIP Security (hat tip to Thomas Lee )


• SearchSecurity: The threats to telcos and how they can repel them


• TMCnet: Balancing Issues in World of Telepresence


• Network World: VoIP Security Buying Guide
• Nortel and SecureLogix Team to Deliver Voice Security and Management Solutions to Worldwide Enterprise Market (see also this analysis )


• Sipera Partner Network Arms Resellers With Comprehensive UC and VoIP Security


• VIVOphone Deploys Paradial RealTunnel® to Solve NAT Traversal Challenges for VoIP Services


• Audiocodes joins the ranks of SBC vendors


• SearchSecurity: Securing the new network (interesting because it shows the layers of a defense in depth)


• The Hindu Business News: Serious about Security


• Shows:
  
  
  
  • IP Telephony University – June 23-24, Alexandria, VA
  
  
  • IPTComm 2008 – July 1-2, Heidelberg, Germany
  
  
  • The Last H.O.P.E. – July 18-20, New York
  
  
  • SpeechTek – August 18-20, New York
  
  
  
  
• Call for papers for Hack-in-the-box Malaysia ends June 30th



• SchmooCon 2008 videos available – several dealing with VoIP
• No comments this week.
  
• Review of the last week's traffic on the VOIPSEC public mailing list 


• Wrap-up of the show


• 47:09 - End of show 

Comments, suggestions and feedback are welcome either as replies to this post  or via e-mail to blueboxpodcast@gmail.com.  Audio comments sent as attached MP3 files are definitely welcome and will be played in future shows.  You may also call the listener comment line at either +1-415-830-5439 or via SIP to 'bluebox@voipuser.org' to leave a comment there. 

Thank you for listening and please do let us know what you think of the show.




]]> Wed, 27 Aug 2008 15:53:18 +0000 voip security voip security news voip voip security tools voip steganography voip services security skype security vulnerabilities voip security podcast Blue Box #82: Asterisk & Skype security vulnerabilities, new VoIP security tools, VoIP steganography, VoIP security news and much, much more... http://www.securityratty.com/article/d6159c811142ec79b33df332f183115d http://www.securityratty.com/article/d6159c811142ec79b33df332f183115d Tue, 26 Aug 2008 20:00:00 +0000 usb drive remote nortel hopes link stick information tackle office session Nortel uses USB drive to secure remote work http://www.securityratty.com/article/c1c240c6c76ad75e8eac51f5ee69bbfa http://www.securityratty.com/article/c1c240c6c76ad75e8eac51f5ee69bbfa Tue, 26 Aug 2008 10:15:42 +0000 virtual gauntlet human nature lists answer adversary consequences remote challenge A pox upon your network... http://www.securityratty.com/article/a92cdf5dd8f2018462a4657fa7e717b8 http://www.securityratty.com/article/a92cdf5dd8f2018462a4657fa7e717b8

IBM announced today that it was spending US$300 million to build out 13 data centers in 10 countries in 2008 - IBM refers to these sites as "Business Resilience service delivery centers". These centers will certainly help IBM deliver more of its traditional IT recovery services but they will also support the next generation of IT continuity services - repeatable, scalable, productize services such as online backup and virtual recovery.  These types of services don't require massive capital investment in an inventory of heterogeneous server and storage platforms, instead the service provider can focus its efforts on building a scalable pool of virtualized servers and shared storage built with industry standard components.

Online backup is an important service because it provides an affordable information protection service for small and medium businesses and it's even useful for enterprises as a means to backup PCs corporate-wide as well as small servers at remote locations. In addition to the $300 million that IBM is spending on its new resiliency centers, late in 2008, it acquired Arsenal Digital Solutions, one of the major players in online backup.

In addition to online backup, recovery services using software-based replication to a cloud infrastructure will also open up new opportunities. These services will provide a much a better recovery time and recovery point than tape-based services but won't cost nearly as much as custom services based on storage-based replication and dedicated hardware. The cost of these services is more than most small and medium, even some large enterprises can or are willing to pay for. SunGard was the first to announce such a productized service, Forrester expects all the traditional DR service providers to bring similar offerings to market over time.

These cloud-based service offerings are important for several other reasons, first, it could help stem the tide of enterprises who are just so fed up with the traditional disaster recovery services model that they take DR back in house, second, it could convince, more medium size businesses that they can afford more advanced IT continuity solutions and lastly, it will help protect their market against new competitors who can simply partner with cloud providers such as Amazon S3 and Google to offer similar services.

IBM is not only using its expansion and acquisitions to stay competitive, it's also also hoping that customers will recognize the value of IBM expertise, process and best practices in BC.

What do you think? Does the reputation and expertise of BC and IT Continuity service providers like IBM and SunGard critical in your decision-making or can new players enter the market? Do these lower cost services that offer better RTO and RPO renew your interest in service providers or do you still plan to keep DR in-house?

I welcome your thoughts.

]]> Fri, 22 Aug 2008 11:38:40 +0000 services recovery recovery services continuity services service ibm service provider service offerings cost IBM Raises The Stakes In Business and IT Continuity Services http://www.securityratty.com/article/6b9c7c33e5616ba64bf9474f4533c161 http://www.securityratty.com/article/6b9c7c33e5616ba64bf9474f4533c161 The Internal Threat Encyclopedia contains both shady and clearly legitimate software that is subject to abuse. For instance, you'll find Laplink and Timbuktu in there, both straight-up remote control programs. The top 5 internal threats, according to the encyclopedia, includes (today) Google Talk, Skype and MySpace. These applications are well known for sure, but the encyclopedia entries are a handy collection of the problems each can cause. It could be useful if you need to explain why you're setting rules against one of them.]]> Thu, 21 Aug 2008 11:39:04 +0000 encyclopedia internal threat encyclopedia internal threats encyclopedia entries handy collection google talk timbuktu laplink rules Internal Network Threat Encyclopedia http://www.securityratty.com/article/611a4500bae5305083aff35d9565bcf9 http://www.securityratty.com/article/611a4500bae5305083aff35d9565bcf9 Fri, 15 Aug 2008 19:07:46 +0000 microsoft windows execute arbitrary code wild nslookup exe attacks prone issue error Zero-day Microsoft Windows NSlookup.exe Vulnerability Exploited In The Wild http://www.securityratty.com/article/fb40e81f04b22ace544dd6979a548459 http://www.securityratty.com/article/fb40e81f04b22ace544dd6979a548459 Thu, 14 Aug 2008 20:00:00 +0000 malicious spam messages botnet network georgia apparently russia conflict aim computers midst Anti-Georgia spammers building new botnet http://www.securityratty.com/article/c1a26694b7d3db2c185a5f976e06cc90 http://www.securityratty.com/article/c1a26694b7d3db2c185a5f976e06cc90

Blogger: Ramon Krikken

The web browser is one of those peculiar pieces of software, having to accept input from arbitrary sources and then parse and render the data that is sent to it. Part of this it does by itself, and other parts are taken care of by handlers and plug-ins. In doing so, it displays hypertext, images, videos, and even runs active content like Flash, JavaScript, and ActiveX.

But however much we love the browser, we’ve also come to hate the myriad of vulnerabilities that affect it. Everything from cross-site scripting to remote code execution via maliciously formed animated cursor files and Flash content can make browsing a hazardous activity. The browser is sick, and that’s not desirable for a platform we use for important business and personal transactions.

Worsening the browser’s diagnosis is the recent paper from Mark Dowd and Alexander Sotirov, sub-titled “Setting back browser security by 10 years,” which discusses how to bypass Microsoft Vista’s memory protection capabilities with some added effort for the exploit designers. It’s not that all of the techniques are necessarily new, but the browser appears to be particularly vulnerable to easy exploitation.

Surprising? Not exactly, when we take into account that the browser is suffering from the same disease as the general purpose operating system: bloat and compatibility. We expect the browser to do ever more, but everything we used it for before still needs to work as if it were yesterday. It feels a bit like people insisting on using a cardboard box as a safe, and wondering why their money keeps getting stolen.

It’s not like we haven’t been working on the browser’s cure, though. There have been some improvements in the browsers themselves, the operating systems have also implemented compensating controls, but most of all, there has been an enormous push for securing the web applications that deliver the data in the first place. Unfortunately, the latter two won’t help secure the browser in the long run.

The first issue is that not all content will come from ‘nice’ servers, the second that the server can only make an educated guess on how a browser will parse and render a given set of data, and the third that operating system controls have their own limitations, whether by design or implementation (for example needing to re-compile existing code to enable certain protections.) The browser, in the end, has to be mostly responsible for keeping itself safe; the operating system must assist it in doing so.

So we’re in a pickle. The browser is sick (and the operating system is too), but it’s hard to cure it without a redesign that will undoubtedly impact compatibility, the ever-so-desired multi-functionality, or its ease of use. We can layer defenses by using web filtering in the enterprise environment, but in the end – for the consumer market in particular – we need to fix the browser itself. I can think of a few things I think might help:

• Some kind of site security policy  to restrict where the browser loads auxiliary content from, and which data it can ‘trust’, when loading a web page (I’d prefer mandatory enforcement, and adding an HTML tag to be able to indicate blocks of untrustworthy data.)
• Restricted compartments for plug-ins to run in, ensuring that their bugs cannot easily affect the whole browser.
• Better software development practices for the plug-ins and content parsers themselves, so that they’re less vulnerable, and compiled with the latest protection measures to begin with.

All of this means more work, and some of it means a lot of unhappy reactions when things stop working. Even then we will of course still have to deal with additional vulnerabilities, such as those that may be present in hardware, but we will at least have taken prudent steps to ‘find a cure.’

]]> Thu, 14 Aug 2008 07:11:14 +0000 browser web browser browser appears web cure browser security content runs active content browsers cure The web browser is sick but wheres the cure? http://www.securityratty.com/article/a930349b033e6f56c6098e0b152daddf http://www.securityratty.com/article/a930349b033e6f56c6098e0b152daddf Meraki reworks product line, drops new sales of community flavor: The cheap mesh router company has mutated slightly once again. The partly-Google-backed firm founded by MIT RoofNet "graduates" built the company on the notion that they could sell $50 routers that could mesh with each other, and use a robust central management system they developed. Over time, the $50 price didn't hold up for commercial networks of scale. Last October, the company mishandled a change in its business model when they abruptly announced a $100 increase in price for newly purchased nodes under their Meraki Pro level for any network that wanted to control whether or not ads appeared, have user accounts, and charge for service. (They eventually recovered, apologized, and reworked some of the transition details.) The company continued to offer a $50 indoor and $100 outdoor Standard level nodes for networks that required ads and had other limits. As of a few days ago, Standard is dead, and the Meraki mini has been upgraded to the Meraki Indoor ($150). The Indoor has signal strength LEDs on the side for better help in placing units, an internal antenna, and better resilience against power fluctuations. The company explains its move in eliminating Standard by noting that most customers moved to Pro. It's not precisely the end of idealism (nor did that happen last October), as Meraki is still one of the major commercial mesh vendors, and their products are still vastly easier and a fraction of the cost of higher-end competitors.


New life for dead Tempe network? Another firm has expressed interest in buying the pennies on the dollar assets that remain of the former Kite Networks installation in Tempe from the firm that financed the venture as long as they can negotiate a new, more favorable deal with the city for mounting and removal rights. CTC, Inc., which the East Valley Tribune reports runs networks in the Kansas City, Mo., area, thinks there's an opportunity. The article notes that reception problems were due in part to the prevalence of stucco in Tempe, common in the southwest. Stucco walls layer plaster or other materials on a wire mesh for strength that turns a house into a bit of an accidental Faraday cage, partially shielding the home from electromagnetic radiation. (Could I go so far to say that Tempe's network could be a phoenix? Ouch.)

Wake up, you darn computer: Intel's new Remote Wake motherboards won't work with Wi-Fi, it's important to note. The feature, announced today, will let an incoming VoIP call (the articles all say "phone call over the Internet") to wake a computer, as long as the call comes from a particular source. Of course, the standard SIP protocol for VoIP doesn't have the kind of security and integrity that would allow this; Intel has to overcome the problem with network address translation that renders most computer unreachable from outside the local network without a separate service like GoToMyPC or LogMeIn; and it will only work for computers connected via Ethernet to a local network, because Wi-Fi is off when a computer sleeps, while Ethernet can remain lightly active. I don't have the protocol details yet, but there's long been a Wake on LAN protocol that required support in a router, operating system, and Ethernet card; Intel may be leveraging this.

]]> Thu, 14 Aug 2008 06:32:51 +0000 meraki network network address translation dead tempe network dead tempe standard meraki indoor meraki mini Wee-Fi: Meraki Modifies, Drops Standard; Tempe's Phoenix?; Remote Wake, Wi-Fi Need Not Apply http://www.securityratty.com/article/df0606458c7029fd2520302ee43099b3 http://www.securityratty.com/article/df0606458c7029fd2520302ee43099b3 This is gonna be a biggie people.
Good luck to us all.

clipped from www.internetnews.com Patch Tuesday Targets ‘Mammoth’ Set of Flaws The six critical security flaws relate to Remote Code Execution vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows, Internet Explorer, Media Access Player, Access, Excel, PowerPoint and Microsoft Office. All versions of Windows, from Windows 2000 to Vista, and Windows Server 2003 and 2008, are impacted. Microsoft today also released an updated version of the Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool.

]]> Tue, 12 Aug 2008 20:50:56 +0000 microsoft microsoft windows windows critical security flaws windows server access flaws media access player microsoft office Patch Tuesday? Aw jeez!