---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message-ID: <20170320012655.GA14599@telecom.csail.mit.edu> Date: Sun, 19 Mar 2017 21:26:55 -0400 From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net> Subject: VoIP Equipment Grounding Thanks for reading this. I need information about grounding, and I'd appreciate your help. The IEEE 1100 standards have a lot of information on this topic, but the printer versions cost hundreds of dollars, so I hope there's someone in the TD world who can provide some less costly advice. I was recently called to one of my customer locations, where the Quintum AXM2400 VoIP endpoints had been damaged for the third of fourth time by what the customer describes as "lightning". As with previous visits, there was no sign of a lightning strike at the site: no burned equipment, no reports of fire, no fire alarms, no melter wire, no displaced cabling in the racks, no insulation burnt off the wires. Most telling, to my mind, was the lack of damage to the Mitek surge protectors that are used in place of bridging clips at the "66" blocks where the dial tones from the Quintum VoIP adapters appear. The UPS that powers the Quintum units has the usual surge suppressors, and it's still putting out power and has no scorch, smoke, flare, or other overvoltage marks. I asked the site representative to show me the ground rod outside the telecom room, hoping to find a broken connection or some other obvious reason for the repeated callbacks. It turned out that there was no ground rod: the telco room grounding leads, tied together in the usual way at screw-down strips on the plywood backplane, eventually wound up in a ground wire which went through the wall to the outside, up to the eaves, around two corners, through another wall, around another couple of corners, and into a three-phase electrical panel. The total length of the ground is over fifty feet counting the interior legs, so I'm wondering if a power surge or surges might have been prevented or at least lessened by a shorter and/or more widely distributed ground. So, the questions: what does the IEEE 1100 standard say about the gauge and length of ground wires? 1. I've never seen a ground this long: is length unimportant if the ground admittance is within spec? If I take a "megger" to the site, what are the readings that are within the "good" range? 2. Are there limits on the number of devices placed on a single ground? 3. What's the "official" wire gauge requirement for grounds? The site has a mixture of #14, #12, #8, and #6 wires, with no obvious pattern: the main ground wire that exits through the wall appears to be #6, but I couldn't verify that. Thank you in advance for your help. -- Bill Horne (Remove QRM from my email address to write to me directly) ------------------------------ Message-ID: <56726EF2-F271-4132-A52E-9CA687DC992A@roscom.com> Date: Sun, 19 Mar 2017 11:20:36 -0400 From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> Subject: If Your iPhone is Stolen, These Guys May Try to iPhish You If Your iPhone is Stolen, These Guys May Try to iPhish You KrebsOnSecurity recently featured the story of a Brazilian man who was peppered with phishing attacks trying to steal his Apple iCloud username and password after his wife's phone was stolen in a brazen daylight mugging. Today, we'll take an insider's look at an Apple iCloud phishing gang that appears to work quite closely with organized crime rings - within the United States and beyond - to remotely unlock and erase stolen Apple devices. Victims of iPhone theft can use the Find My iPhone feature to remotely locate, lock or erase their iPhone - just by visiting Apple's site and entering their iCloud username and password. Likewise, an iPhone thief can use those iCloud credentials to remotely unlock the victim's stolen iPhone, wipe the device, and resell it. As a result, iPhone thieves often subcontract the theft of those credentials to third-party iCloud phishing services. This story is about one of those services. https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/03/if-your-iphone-is-stolen-these-guys-may-try-to-iphish-you/ ------------------------------ Message-ID: <20170320003538.GA14452@telecom.csail.mit.edu> Date: Sun, 19 Mar 2017 20:35:38 -0400 From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net> Subject: Level 3 and Centurylink Shareholders Approve Merger Level 3 and CenturyLink shareholders approve merger Deal will "bring substantial operational and service benefits to our enterprise customers." Shareholders from CenturyLink Inc. and Broomfield-based Level 3 Communications approved the merger of the two telecoms on Thursday. The combined company will be based in Monroe, La., which is CenturyLink's headquarters. But the company will continue to have a presence in Colorado and the Denver area. http://www.denverpost.com/2017/03/16/level-3-centurylink-shareholders-approve-merger/ -- Bill Horne (Remove QRM from my email address to write to me directly) ------------------------------ ********************************************* End of telecom Digest Mon, 20 Mar 2017