30 Years of the Digest ... founded August 21, 1981

Add this Digest to your personal   or  

The Telecom Digest for August 3, 2012
Volume 31 : Issue 187 : "text" Format
Messages in this Issue:
Re: The Telecom Digest (1 messages) (Chris Farrar)
Attack against Microsoft scheme puts hundreds of crypto apps at risk (Monty Solomon)
FCC to Verizon: Don't block tethering apps. Verizon settles for $1.25M (Monty Solomon)
Re: Challenge-Response (Jon Danniken)

====== 30 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ======

Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Bill Horne and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using any name or email address included herein for any reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to that person, or email address owner.
Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without the explicit written consent of the owner of that address. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome.

We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime.  - Geoffrey Welsh

See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer, and other stuff of interest. 




Date: Wed, 01 Aug 2012 12:12:43 -0400
From: Chris Farrar <cfarrar1307@rogers.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: The Telecom Digest (1 messages) 
Message-ID: <5019557B.9030902@rogers.com>

> Per T:
>>> It's not going to happen. Most phone services allow call-block now. And
>>> on my phone I use Blacklist for Android - MetroPCS wants to charge me a
>>> buck a month for phone block. A $2 app does it forever and I don't need
>>> to pay MetroPCS for the privilege.
>> But don't Call-Block services depend on a blacklist?  If so, who
>> maintains the blacklist?
>>
>> What data does the Android app work from?   Does it just block
>> anything where the calling number is not in your phonebook?
> No, you can tell the Blacklist application what numbers to block. I
> quite like it as when you want to add it'll go into the phone call log
> and let you choose a number.
>

There is a similar program for Blackberry, I use iBlocker Pro on mine.   
It will reject calls (either dump straight to voicemail or auto-answer 
and hang up on the call) and reply to texts from blocked numbers too 
with your own "custom" message.




Date: Wed, 1 Aug 2012 09:28:08 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Attack against Microsoft scheme puts hundreds of crypto apps at  risk
Message-ID: <p062408a3cc3e7bbac44f@[10.0.1.6]>

Attack against Microsoft scheme puts hundreds of crypto apps at risk
Cloud-based service requires an average of 12 hours to decrypt VPN traffic.

by Dan Goodin
July 31 2012
Ars Technica

Researchers have devised an attack against a Microsoft-developed 
authentication scheme that makes it trivial to break the encryption 
used by hundreds of anonymity and security services, including the 
iPredator virtual private network offered to users of The Pirate Bay.

The attack, unveiled by Moxie Marlinspike and David Hulton, takes on 
average just 12 hours to recover the secret key that iPredator and 
more than 100 other VPN and wireless products use to encrypt 
sensitive data. The technique, which has been folded into 
Marlinspike's CloudCracker service, exploits weaknesses in version 2 
of a Microsoft technology known as MS-CHAP, short for Microsoft 
challenge-handshake authentication protocol. It's widely used to log 
users into VPN and WPA2 networks and is built into a variety of 
operating systems, including Windows and Ubuntu.

...

http://arstechnica.com/security/2012/07/broken-microsoft-sheme-exposes-traffic/




Date: Wed, 1 Aug 2012 10:37:25 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: FCC to Verizon: Don't block tethering apps. Verizon settles for  $1.25M
Message-ID: <p062408a9cc3eeecf495a@[10.0.1.6]>

FCC to Verizon: Don't block tethering apps. Verizon settles for $1.25M

BY Stacey Higginbotham
Jul 31, 2012

The FCC has come to a settlement with Verizon Wireless that will 
allow customers of the nation's largest wireless network to use 
tethering apps from the Android market, and thus circumvent the $20 
monthly fee Verizon charges for using a phone as a mobile hot spot.

Verizon customers will soon have the option of downloading Android 
apps that let them turn their phone into a mobile hotspot -apps that 
Verizon blocked initially because it didn't want customers 
circumventing its $20 a month mobile hot spot fee. The FCC has 
determined that nation's largest wireless carrier was in the wrong in 
this situation because it had purchased spectrum back in 2008 that 
required Verizon to allow open access to its network.

...

http://gigaom.com/mobile/fcc-tells-verizon-you-cant-block-tethering-apps-verizon-settles-for-1-25m/




Date: Thu, 02 Aug 2012 08:46:07 -0700
From: Jon Danniken <jonSPAMdanniken@yaSMPAhoo.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Challenge-Response 
Message-ID: <jve7bt$uq2$1@speranza.aioe.org>

On 07/20/2012 08:42 AM, Pete Cresswell wrote:
> I have been ranting about challenge-response periodically for a
> couple of years now.
>
> "Captcha" for phones, so-to-speak.
>
> Does anybody else think that's where phone service is headed
> globally?
>
> I'm thinking that a standard part of phone service (like the
> ubiquitous answering-machine functionality) will be a means to
> implement challenge-response.
>
> A couple of examples where the phone doesn't even ring until the
> challenge has been met:
>
> - A message that says "Press 1 for Joe, press 2 for Sam, press 3
> for Sue...... where the right number to press is buried somewhere
> in there and pressing anything else disconnects the call.
>
> - A message that says something like "Please the number of
> fingers on a human hand" and anything but 5 disconnects.

Back in the nineties I had a 28.8kb ISA faxmodem which came with 
telephony software (I think it was Sierra somethingorother).  It was 
intended for business use, but I quickly adapted it to my POTS service, 
and used it to screen incoming calls before they were sent to the actual 
phone.

Of course this only worked when the computer was on, but since most all 
of the automated dialers at the time called out in the afternoon and 
evening, it worked well enough.

Jon






TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecom-
munications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in
addition to Usenet, where it appears as the moderated newsgroup
'comp.dcom.telecom'.

TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational
service offered to the Internet by Bill Horne. All the contents
of the Digest are compilation-copyrighted. You may reprint articles in
some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work
and that of the original author.

The Telecom Digest is moderated by Bill Horne.
Contact information: Bill Horne
Telecom Digest
43 Deerfield Road
Sharon MA 02067-2301
339-364-8487
bill at horne dot net
Subscribe: telecom-request@telecom-digest.org?body=subscribe telecom
Unsubscribe: telecom-request@telecom-digest.org?body=unsubscribe telecom 
This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm-
unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and
published continuously since then.  Our archives are available for
your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list
on the internet in any category!

URL information: http://telecom-digest.org


Copyright (C) 2012 TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved.
Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA.



Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as
yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help
is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars
per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above.
Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing
your name to the mailing list. 

All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the
author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only
and messages should not be considered any official expression by the
organization.
End of The Telecom Digest (4 messages)

Return to Archives ** Older Issues