Sipera Systems and Future Com Joins Hands To Provide Unified Communications Security To Enterprise.

Press Release http://snapvoip.blogspot.com/
Richardson and Bedford, TX, April 7, 2011— Sipera Systems, the leader in real-time Unified Communications(UC) enablement and security, and Future Com,a leading provider of security and network management solutions, today announced a partnership to better secure enterprise UC.  Future Com has joined Sipera’s Reseller Program as a Gold Tier Reseller, and is working with a major aviation industry customer, updating its security infrastructure to include UC, using best practice recommendations from Sipera and Future Com.

“Future Com Professional Services include the McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator Audit Service, which analyzes existing ePolicy environments to determine proper operations and identify any mis-configurations or inoperative features.  This complements Sipera’s participation in McAfee’s Security Innovation Alliance(SIA),” said Andy Asava, Vice President of Business Development for Sipera.  “Working together, Future Com and Sipera enable enterprises to satisfy industry security and privacy mandates, benefit from real-time UC collaboration, and secure business critical communications.”

“By partnering with Sipera, we can better ensure our enterprise customers’ communications are compliant with HIPAA, PCI DSS and SOX mandates,” said Douglas Hollenshead, CEO & President for Future Com. “And, given our joint McAfee expertise, we can comprehensively conduct Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing, and deploy integrated UC security and network management systems, in those environments.”

Sipera’s UC-Sec appliances proactively address security risks associated with UC applications such as VoIP, instant messaging, IP video and collaboration tools, enabling government agencies and enterprise customers to adopt UC applications and apply comprehensive security.  Sipera’s groundbreaking “Borderless UC”architecture enables all communications to be encrypted and compliant on any UC device, at any internal and external location.
VoIP Security with Sipera
Sipera

VoIP Security, Asterisk, SIP, Brute Force Attacks, Explained By John Todd Of Digium.

VoIP Security snapvoip.blogspot.com
My thoughts when I read the article saying  “Asterisk attacks are endemic” were ????*&^ and I also knew that John Todd knew what he is doing. So I let the article pass as I was certain it was not the case.
Today Todd has posted an article explaining the misinterpretation of his thoughts and the verbalization of the same.

My comment in the article was not that “Asterisk attacks are endemic”, but that SIP-based brute force attacks are endemic.  Every SIP system that is open to the “public” Internet is seeing large numbers of brute-force attacks.  Sites that have weak username and weak password control will be compromised – this is little different than email accounts being taken over by password-guessing systems and used for sending floods of email.  The significant difference is that when someone takes over a SIP platform to make outbound calls, there is usually a direct monetary cost, which gets people’s attention very quickly.

We all know that Asterisk is used world over and is the favorite SIP based telephony platform is likely to attract people who are interested in hacking or attacking the system. But we also have seen security measures taken by Asterisk as well. Just like the one released day before yesterday, AST-2009-07, where the advisory and the fix was released simultaneously.
But what Todd wrote makes sense and as Asterisk, Broadsoft, Cisco, Kamailio, OpenSER, FreeSwitch, Avaya are all vulnerable to brute force attacks and every bit of  information will help. Whether it is news worthy or not.
Asterisk and SIP Security Redux

Live Web Cast, Learn "How Google Tackles IT Security"

Tackling IT Security
We all know that we do not have a IT shop the size and magnitude of Google but we all have our own IT shops that we love and adore and look after, just like a new born baby. We also know time to time we run into security issues, from script kiddies to full blown frontal attacks.
Since we are dealing with VoIP IP Telephony, and VoIP security a vital part of any organization, from mom and pop shop to enterprises, these machinery need to keep running 24/7 to ensure proper service.
So when I saw the post by Google about a webinar regarding IT Security or at least how they handle it, I thought it might be interest to most of you.
This live webcast, “How Google Tackles IT Security – and What You Can Learn From It,” to learn about security in the cloud and get your questions answered by members of Google's Security team. Participants include:

Eran Feigenbaum – As the Director of Security for Google Apps, Eran Feigenbaum defines and implements security strategy for Google's suite of solutions for enterprises. Prior to joining Google in 2007, Eran was the US Chief Information Security Officer for PricewaterhouseCoopers.

John Flynn – John “Four” Flynn has an extensive background in network monitoring, intrusion detection, and incident response. John currently leads Google's Security Monitoring program and is a founder of Google's Security Metrics group.

Bradley Taylor – Gmail's “Spam Czar,” Brad Taylor leads Gmail's technical anti-spam, anti-abuse, and email delivery engineering efforts. Brad has played a key role in the development of Gmail's spam filter since Gmail launched in April, 2004.

Eric Sachs – Eric Sachs has over 15 years of experience with user identity and security for hosted web applications. During his years at Google, he has worked as a Product Manager for many services including Google Accounts, Google Apps, orkut, Google Health, Google Security, and Internal Systems.

You will learn:

• What are the latest security threats against web-based apps?
• What best practices does Google employ to protect Google Apps?
• How does Google monitor, detect and respond to threats?
• Plus live Q & A!

Join Google for the live webcast to learn about the people, best practices, and technologies that we have in place to minimize security threats.

How Google Tackles IT Security – and What You Can Learn From It
Thursday, October 1, 2009
11:00 a.m. PDT / 2:00 p.m. EDT / 6:00 p.m. GMT 

I will be there!

Fraud calls to Cuba And VoIP Attacks.

http://snapvoip.blogspot.com/
I was browsing through Gossamer-threads mailing list on Cisco when I came across a post regarding "Fraud calls to Cuba - Please read" by a member. The thread went on to explain how the attackers were using port scans to find open H323 TCP/1720 and SIP UDP/5060 ports and to make calls out from pots lines. The thread showed that this is not a random happening but prevalent in the Cisco MCE router world as these ports are open by default. All the cases did not have ACLs in place and once implemented they were able to prevent these costly attacks. So people with routers attached to PSTN via PRI or even a FXO line, check your routers.
So if you have an Internet facing router, why not just check for open ports. On Cisco routers you can use show ip sockets on older IOS and on newer IOS show control-plane host open-ports
On other routers use appropriate commands to check for open ports and close them. If you need to keep them open, use ACLs.
How about your Asterisk server? It is also essentially a router with usually a PSTN or SIP or trunk service gateway. The attackers could easily get in an out through the server if necessary precautions were not taken.
Think of an Asterisk server with “outbound” context to the SIP provider accessible by the inbound context.
It is possible for incoming calls that do not find matching numbers internally, to get routed out to the SIP provider via Outbound context. Here is an open gateway for hackers.. And there goes your money that you are trying to save with VoIP.

Basic Steps to Protect your VoIP routers or Servers.

• Firewall or session border controller, Always between you and the internet.
  
• Use ACLs to limit your access to your VoIP servers.
• Block inbound contexts in Asterisk accessing the outbound.
• Update the IOS and Server software regularly.
• Keep an eye open for security vulnerabilities from your vendor.
  
• Utilize VPN tunnels when ever is possible to protect the VoIP traffic going over the Internet
• SIP TLS and SRTP will save your day.
  
• Shutdown all services on not in use on your servers and routers.

Tags: VoIP Security, Asterisk, pstn, SIP, FXO, VoIP Attacks, VoIP server, VoIP routers, CISCO, Cisco ACL

VoiP Systems As Easy As 1.2.3 To Hack ?

"Back in February, when little-known VoIPshield Systems sent a report to Cisco (NSDQ:CSCO), Avaya (NYSE:AV) and Nortel (NYSE:NT) detailing vulnerabilities in their VoIP technologies, the three largest IP-PBX vendors on the market shrugged off the report and never responded. The vendors began cooperating and acknowledging on their Websites of the risks to their VoIP systems, only after VoIPshield continued reporting the vulnerabilities publicly. Nortel attributed a vulnerability to VoIPshield on April 10, for example"

Above is a part of what an article on ChannelWeb of CRN. It was a very interesting aricle and I suggest that you visit the site and read it. But what I found to be more interesting is the comment left by VoIPshield's CEO, Rick Dalmazzi.

"but because most of the companies we talk to have Cisco VoIP installed. - Cisco has been extremely responsive to us from the beginning, and has reacted quickly to make patches available to their customers. ---------------doing a Google search and finding an exposed VoIP system has nothing to do with the vendor. It was shown to demonstrate how cyber criminals ply their trade and how some companies, through carelessness or ignorance, make it easy for them."

So next time, take analysts ideas with a grain of salt. But I did see a Cisco Call Manager System open to the web!

Analysis: Hacking VoIP, As Easy As 1-2-3 by ChannelWeb, and don't forget to read the comment mentioned above.

VoIPshield Systems

http://snapvoip.blogspot.com/

Tags: VoIPshield, IP-PBX, Nortel, Cisco, VoIP Analysis, VoIP Security, Cisco Call Manager