Google Voice Fixes Security Flaw, Almost 55
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."
Typo (Score:1)
I refer you to my signature:
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And I refer you to how to properly use sic [wikipedia.org], which is to say: It should be enclosed in square brackets, not in parenthesis.
Gosh, now I can feel smugly superior, too!
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And I refer you to how to properly use [sic]...
FTFY
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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.
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Not a typo, this article was merely written by the brilliant minds that brought us the Nintendo Wii
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Oh no you diint!
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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.
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Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:"including expensive international calls" (Score:5, Funny)
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".
Phreakers (Score:5, Funny)
Hackers, meet the Phreakers, Phreakers, meet the Hackers. Have fun!!
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Oh, we've met, we don't get along, but we've met.
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Prolly shouldn't have used Trixbox (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Or they authenticate SIP phones by using their phone number as a password.
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Well, it is not only a "VoIP" problem. You still can access Metro PCS cellphones voicemail boxes that way. I used to check all my girlfriends' voicemails and be able to delete the ones I wanted, simply by setting the caller ID on my Asterisk as theirs.
Now, Metro PCS tells the users to create a password to secure their mailboxes. But, still, if your dtmf is working right, you can enter their passwords and keep looking into their voicemail boxes. Usually girls' passwords are really easy to guess: their body m
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I used to check all my girlfriends' voicemails
AC and claiming to have multiple girlfriends while posting on Slashdot? I smell a rat.
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You're creepy.
Modern Day Phreakers (Score:1)
2600 plz (Score:4, Funny)
I took down google voice with my captain crunch whistle.
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Re:Who cares (Score:5, Informative)
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.
No more "Press 1 to answer the call, press 2 to.." (Score:1)
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.
Re:No more "Press 1 to answer the call, press 2 to (Score:2)
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
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Things like having certain people's calls go through without the Call Presentation thing.
You can do that! It's configurable by groups.
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If only Google would add number porting...
They talked about it for ages with Grand Central ...
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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.
Has been true since early days (Score:3, Insightful)
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
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On the plus side, they did add some settings if you're concerned about this. Under Advanced Settings for each phone, you can now control whether or not it requires a PIN to access voicemail.
With Grand Central, devices listed as 'mobile' just got special treatment, but now it's a little finer grained.
I'm not really sure how else they could handle this, besides just eliminating the PIN-less voicemail and account control features entirely or having the default as off with big warnings about the boogeymen who w
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The problem is Caller ID can't be trusted... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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And yet, so many agencies, such as credit card companies, require that you phone in from your "home phone" to activate new cards.
Just because you seem to have figured out that it "doesn't work to use it for authentication", does not mean that it is commonly accepted of how unreliable it truly is and continues to be. Public attention (at least by "security professionals") needs to have more and updated education on best practices. Maybe you might consider being a trainer?
Re:The problem is Caller ID can't be trusted... (Score:4, Informative)
Credit card companies use ANI (automatic number identification) instead of CPN (calling party number) for their "authentication". HUGE difference there as ANI cannot be spoofed.. .
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Yes it can, just as easily as CID.
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It is "good enough" (Score:2)
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-cor
Grand Central (Score:2)
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It seems they are transitioning GrandCentral users first? In the future there's an expectation of being able to offer invites à la original gmail.
However, availability of numbers in areas you want might be limited still?
I have a local friend who signed up about a week before the Google Voice transition announcement who hasn't heard back either.
What the hell are you guys talking about? (Score:1)
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Just wait. It will turn out that Bauer was exposed to a techno-organic virus that turns him into a CIP device that is organic and plays techno.