Corporate Boardrooms Open To Eavesdropping 120
cweditor writes "One afternoon this month, a hacker toured a dozen corporate conference rooms via equipment that most every company has in those rooms: videoconferencing. Rapid7 says they could 'easily read a six-digit password from a sticky note over 20 feet away from the camera' and 'clearly hear conversations down the hallway from the video conferencing system.' With some systems, they could even capture keystrokes being typed in the room. Teleconferencing vendors defended their security, saying the auto-answer feature that left those system vulnerable was an effort to strike the right balance between security and usability."
You're going to be disappointed...and bored (Score:4, Insightful)
This may be good for some corporate espionage. But if any hacker is doing this thinking he's going to expose the dark corporate underbelly, he's going to be disappointed.
If my experience is any indication, the evil stuff doesn't go on in rooms like that. Contrary to the movies, you have very few open meetings where a bunch of guys sit around and openly plot evil deeds. Most of that stuff is done in much smaller settings, and even then they use euphemisms and obfuscation. It's not like someone says openly "Hey, can we we bribe some local politicians so we can get away with dumping our factory wastewater into their rivers?" Instead they say something like "How can we cut costs at this factory?" to which someone else responds "Well, if we could get rid of the burdensome environmental regulations down there, then it would help with profitability" to which someone else responds "I'll call our people there and have them talk with some of our political allies."
I imagine some "hacktivists" will hack these systems expecting to get a smoking gun. But after hours of watching, all they'll get are a lot of boring meetings filled with financial figures, shitty powerpoint presentations, and corporate-speak platitudes. It'll be a lot less "Here's our secret plan" and a lot more "Here are the fourth quarter earnings breakdowns" and "Let's talk about how we build synergy in Asian markets..."
Insider trading (Score:5, Insightful)
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and 100 years ago that would be done by eavesdropping near or in the boardroom. so what's the big deal?
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Now you can do it while never leaving home and your odds of being caught are a lot lower.
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there are types of crime a computer makes possible that were impossible before. but I'm not seeing that with this videoconferencing hysteria, all the same issues existed 100 years ago.
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Perhaps new ways of committing old crimes. "With a computer" isn't a new kind of crime, it's just a new way of accomplishing it.
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Perhaps new ways of committing old crimes. "With a computer" isn't a new kind of crime, it's just a new way of accomplishing it.
"With a computer that has rounded corners"
There, now it's new.
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I suppose the smart executives can leak the address of their conferencing system, then let some mis-info leak so the would-be insider trader ends up with a bad deal.
Me? If I saw such a thing, watching the chairs fly would be purely for entertainment. No chair-futures trading for me.
With MS getting money out of Android vendors, I wonder if they'd go so far as to demand likeness-licensing fees for a chair-throwing app?
Re:You're going to be disappointed...and bored (Score:4, Interesting)
I can summarize that long post to nothing ever gets accomplished in meetings, non-criminal or criminal.
Maybe you'll get to stare at a hot intern. Speaking of which, your best hope is "attending" some all-male meetings (not hard to find in the STEM fields) and then hope to catch some higher up making a "questionable" joke. Another possibility is catching people making fun of others, customers, clients, competitors, etc.
A lot of meetings are about primate dominance rituals, a sociology student Might find them interesting, but otherwise... For example maybe two decades ago I had a completely non-technical female boss in a 99% male highly technical industry who felt extreme need to assert dominance, so once a week we sat down in front of the then new ISDN video conferencing system and blew hundreds of dollars on LD costs listening to her cross examine people far away talking about stuff no one cared about which she didn't understand anyway. This was back when LD was like ten cents per minute per channel, and we used something like 8 ISDN B channels over a PRI to videoconference, which works out to something like $48/hour... per site... in addition to the spectacular labor cost of shutting down the entire multi-site department for hours on end. I figured once that with overhead each meeting was well into the 4 figure cost range, yet nothing ever really happened.
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No, actually it wasn't. It was a simple factual report as far as we can see. If there is sexism behind it (perhaps he just assUmed the motivations based on her gender, etc) it is not evident here.
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The moral is: Don't leave your windows open if you don't want anybody to see and hear what you do.
this is hilarious (Score:5, Insightful)
Saying that you're not going to find anything is a hilarious misdirect of the fact that the vulnerability has existed for a long time and still does.
Saying "oh they won't find anything" is still not an answer to "but we left the door wide open".
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Re:You're going to be disappointed...and bored (Score:5, Funny)
Saturday Night Live did a spoof of this. When a mob boss says "I'm going out for Cigarettes", he means "I'm going to kill the guy". When he says, "Do the Laundry", he means "Kill the guy". When he says "That's great.", he means "Thanks for killing the guy".
All you need is a Corporate to English translator, and you'll get all the incriminating evidence you need.
Re:You're going to be disappointed...and bored (Score:5, Funny)
>> All you need is a Corporate to English translator, and you'll get all the incriminating evidence you need.
margin control programs = cheat the customer
continued price symmetry = cheat the customer
expanded target demographics = cheat the customer
synergistic empowerment = cheat the customer
organic growth paradigm = cheat the customer
proactive globalization = cheat the customer around the world
win-win mindshare bandwidth = cheat the customer
granular rightsizing = cheat the customer
golden parachute = thanks for cheating the customer
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Re:You're going to be disappointed...and bored (Score:5, Insightful)
It usually goes like this... I go golfing with the senator once a week.
During golfing...
Senator: Hows business?
Business man: It has been better, I think we need to lay off 100 people, we cannot keep ahead of the competition from other States/Country and the key cost is that law that needs us to clean up our water pollution count, we need to change our whole business, and we need to cut people.
Senator: 100 Lay offs during (Thinking that it is an election year), that doesn't sound good, Ill see what I can do.
Then the senator debates to put particular extensions to keep exclude the business from the rules.
Later during the election you will see a Million dollar donation to a Super Pac.
Very rarely people are trying to do evil, they are more often just negligent in doing their work, or too focused on short term issues that they ignore all the long term consequences.
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From my personal limited knowledge, sometimes it works like "hey, call the local utility company anonymously and say there are suds coming out of the street drain/a strange smell by XYZ Corp" with XYZ being a competitor.
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Very rarely people are trying to do evil, they are more often just negligent in doing their work, or too focused on short term issues that they ignore all the long term consequences.
This is Slashdot. Your rational and empathetic consideration for others' behavior is not welcome here. Start raging about the evil corporations, or we will be forced to mod you "-1, Sane".
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I am low down on the corporate later, but even I am regularly in meetings where things like "here is our list of suppliers who haven't been officially announced" and "this supplier is going away in two months, but they don't know it yet" are regularly discussed.
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I'll bet most of the "bad" stuff gets discussed way off site and no written record is kept.
Sort of bad gets discussed on golf courses, yachts, private homes, restaurants.
Really bad and they have one of those anonymous meetings where they just happen to be at the same anonymous, camera-less place at the same time so they can deny ever even meeting or colluding.
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Perhaps we need a paradigm shift.
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Exactly. Spying on keystrokes during corporate meetings will reveal who is perusing porn during the meeting and who is sexting with someone not his wife, but little more. Actually listening to the meetings will simply bore the eavesdropper to death.
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Contrary to the movies, you have very few open meetings where a bunch of guys sit around and openly plot evil deeds. Most of that stuff is done in much smaller settings, and even then they use euphemisms and obfuscation.
That sounds an awful lot like how organized crime does business.
"Hey Vito, did you take care of that thing with that guy in that place? No, the other place. And the other guy. With the thing that he owes us?"
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There's no wiretapping if you installed the device yourself and left it to automagically answer the phone, which is what this is about. By doing so, you are giving "authorization" to anyone and everyone to use the device.
It's like leaving a computer connected to the net with root login enabled and the enter key as the password. Whether it was a conscious decision or your own incompetence, nobody is really exceeding authorization by logging in as root.
It's called not even reading the quickstart card and t
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But a telecommunications device is not a house or a car, and the laws for communications are different because of that.
Metaphors are not laws.
--
BMO
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But a telecommunications device is not a house or a car, and the laws for communications are different because of that.
Metaphors are not laws.
-- BMO
Yet the metaphor is accurate, as you still may not use a completely passwordless computer system you find online without at least implied consent (public web servers, etc). This is not up for debate, as it's easy to research case law.
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How are you using the system if all you are doing is watching a live feed?
I remember when . . . (Score:4, Insightful)
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"... saying the auto-answer feature that left those system vulnerable was an effort to strike the right balance between security and usability."
was just gonna say, that sounds just like MS's excuse to keep AutoRun functional for so long. It was the most flagrant invitation to viruses that has ever existed.
At least at this point most vendors have figured out that automatic code execution from untrusted sources is not a good tradeoff for convenience.
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And I run apache on linux.
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I remember when Microsoft automatically executing email attachments was intended to strike the right balance between security and usability. That was a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.
I'm no fan of Microsoft's security history, but when did they ever have attachments auto execute?
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Circa 2000, Outlook Express.
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A quick Google makes it appear to be more of a bug (a properly malformed MIME header could result in code execution) than attempting to find the right balance between security and usability.
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It is history.
http://www.bizforum.org/whitepapers/panda-2.htm [bizforum.org]
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Ok, as you say, its a bug. Not the same thing as balancing security vs. convenience.
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IIRC back in the DOS days, the first thing the kernel did to a user-opened file, no matter the extension, was to try and execute it. The same holds for any DOS-based windowing system.
When the .wmf format went viral, people quickly discovered that it could not only send commands to a printer/fax/other such output device, it could also be made to overwrite boot sectors, among other nasty surprises. This issue has still NOT been fixed, after what, nearly two decades?
Just two of many examples I can think of off
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Looks like the .wmf vulnerability was fixed in 2006. No widespread exploitation in the wild, either. And that's a bug, not a balance between convenience and security.
The DOS vulnerability seems odd...so if I opened a file in Word Perfect (for DOS) you're saying the kernel would try to execute it before passing the contents on to Word Perfect? Somehow that doesn't seem likely.
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I remember having to set a registry key to disable this in Outlook 97 or 98, and maybe even Outlook 2000. It wouldn't auto-launch a .exe (I don't think), but would automatically run ActiveX or other "active" content code. It was a long time ago, but it definitely did happen.
systematic approach (Score:2)
This should be done systematically and published in quarterly batches, wikileaks style. If the powers that be, who are destroying our freedom and economy as fast as ever they can, can spy on us then it's time we turned the tables. Give them no place to hide.
Does this actually work in real life? (Score:2)
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[...] a whole lot of attention from some high power folks.
Of all the people I have had to brief on new hardware or software those "high power folks" always were the ones who paid the least bit of attention. Well, of course, since whenever they forget which button to press they have a whole army of subordinates to call in and have them get it going for them. You probably could wire a whole fucking Christmas tree lighting to the system and they still would be hard-pressed to notice something happening when it is turned on.
Re:Does this actually work in real life? (Score:5, Funny)
I actually did mount a piece of pegboard in an equipment rack with a smoked glass door and put christmas lights in the holes. I used the kind of lights that have a controller box for running patterns, and set it on "random", and left it running for about five years.
People with suits and ties would just stare at that thing in awe. My boss used to do her dog'n'pony shows standing in front of it.
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That is awesome. Well played, sir, well played.
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Similar results. People would stare at it in amazement thinking it was very important.
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Nice! Mine was labeled "Rozhdyestvo Photonic Emitter" in a very officious font, large enough to read through the smoked glass.
My boss is a native Russian speaker, and Rozhdyestvo is a latinization of ÐоÐÐÐÑÑÐо, which means Christmas. So I literally labeled it "Christmas lights".
My boss was the only one who ever noticed, which was exactly what I intended. She laughed her ass off.
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I actually did mount a piece of pegboard in an equipment rack with a smoked glass door and put christmas lights in the holes. I used the kind of lights that have a controller box for running patterns, and set it on "random", and left it running for about five years.
And you could casually gesture to it and smugly say to the PHB's, "yup. Six nines uptime."
Re:Does this actually work in real life? (Score:5, Insightful)
My experiance with those VTC devices is that when they're off, they make efforts to show that they are indeed off, and conversely when someone connects they do stuff like swivel the camera around, turn on lights, etc... It may be possible to do that without someone noticing, but it seems more likely that you're going to get a whole lot of attention from some high power folks.
Since the company I work at does consulting for C-suite people at a lot of different organizations, I'm pretty sure I have observed enough people to cross the line from anecdotal experience to enough data to form a hypothesis (somebody should test it).
The "higher ups" don't understand technology, even as simple as videoconferencing equipment with a remote that is simpler than a typical cable-TV remote.
When they want to use a video conference, they get somebody from "IT" to come in, click the three buttons that make it hook up, then do their conference, and leave the room, still leaving the conference running because they don't know what the "hang-up" button does.
It isn't that they are idiots, it is just that they don't care, they have "people who handle that stuff" so they don't have to.
So, if the camera comes on, swivels around, auto-focuses, red lights come on, they ignore it, because they don't perceive it as "something I need to concern myself with".
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My experiance with those VTC devices is that when they're off, they make efforts to show that they are indeed off, and conversely when someone connects they do stuff like swivel the camera around, turn on lights, etc... It may be possible to do that without someone noticing, but it seems more likely that you're going to get a whole lot of attention from some high power folks.
Since the company I work at does consulting for C-suite people at a lot of different organizations, I'm pretty sure I have observed enough people to cross the line from anecdotal experience to enough data to form a hypothesis (somebody should test it).
The "higher ups" don't understand technology, even as simple as videoconferencing equipment with a remote that is simpler than a typical cable-TV remote.
When they want to use a video conference, they get somebody from "IT" to come in, click the three buttons that make it hook up, then do their conference, and leave the room, still leaving the conference running because they don't know what the "hang-up" button does.
It isn't that they are idiots, it is just that they don't care, they have "people who handle that stuff" so they don't have to.
So, if the camera comes on, swivels around, auto-focuses, red lights come on, they ignore it, because they don't perceive it as "something I need to concern myself with".
That may be true for usage scenarios, but I know from supporting these systems for more than 10 years that if they come on unannounced, I got a call. Rarely would the unit coming on be ignored unless the system came on/was left on overnight and no one had been in the room as yet. Almost without exception, if the unit was on and not needed it was turned off as soon as someone came in the room. Plus, we NEVER had auto-answer turned on. That's just stupid as it not only wastes electricity (we had it tied t
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It sounded like the examples given were to use the rooms when nobody is in there:
1) look inside the empty room and see what was left on the white board or post it notes etc.
2) listen and here people in an another room.
That seems quite clever and hard to notice. Somebody might walk in, notice the conf system is on and turn it off.
Spying on an actual meeting happening in the same room that the conf system did not seem to be the main target.
Balance (Score:3)
an effort to strike the right balance between security and usability
Microsoft used that same excuse for the early security problems in Windows. It's time we hear a new reason used to rationalize poor design.
So? (Score:5, Informative)
Not really that new. Most telephone systems allow it too.
The Samsung OfficeServ I have, I'm pretty sure I read in the manual about a "silent auto-answer pickup" you can do to a remote phone to tap into the speakerphone and hear anything said in the room WITHOUT indication of what you're doing on the target phone. All you need is the right passcode (which is easy if you're the IT guy) and the phone extension and you can hear whatever is said in the that room.
Given that phones are much more prevalent, much less prominent, and much more unexpected to be "hacked", I think you'd always have had greater success that way. And modern telecoms is all managed on the LAN and sometimes even remotely, so it's just as at risk as anything else.
The number one rule, of course, is don't let third-parties have access to your network, and don't have those sorts of "features" turned on.
Publicly available isn't the primary issue, (Score:2)
Why video conference? (Score:5, Interesting)
My experience is as a scientist and probably is of limited value in other fields, but: I've seen places where the remote meeting culture centered on video conferencing and I've seen places where it instead centered on audio, with the video replaced by slides. The slides normally show useful experimental data or borderline useful financial data. The video normally shows bored people.
When an internal meeting has video it's generally a sign that the meeting doesn't actually need to happen - it's better done through a couple emails or a quick IRC-equivalent chat. Again, outside the world of a scientist I expect this to be different.
Re:Why video conference? (Score:4, Insightful)
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All the video conferencing equipment I've seen has both a mute button and a microphone off button. Learn to love them.
You try making sense of a teleconference when you have 10+ people on the line, some of them with bad connections with delays up to multiple seconds. People speak over each other and interrupt and it can be really hard to hear the difference between people with similar voices.
With video, you can gesture and read the other participants' body language. It helps immensely when trying to understa
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Fair enough, it depends a lot on your workflows.
Videoconferencing has worked wonders my my department, which is split up and located at two different physical locations, 200km apart. Having face-to-face contact through videoconferencing has helped us immensely.
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My company uses videoconferencing all the time to communicate between not only offices across the world, but also clients. It's a very handy thing, particularly when it comes to facetime with colleagues that live in another country yet I work very closely with them - sometimes to the point where we independently create virtually identical documents - it adds a dimension and an intimacy to the transaction that is completely absent in a voice-only teleconference or short message exchange. I reckon that's the
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I'm sure a social scientist could phrase it better, but the reason for video conference is simply one of channels of information.
As humans, our interpersonal interactions are colored by scads of non-verbal dialog, with facial expressions and posture being significant factors. There's even been studies that people tend to think differently based on what they're wearing (work-from-home-in-pajamas-and-robe being less effective than work-from-home-in-a-suit), much less how other people react to them and choose
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When an internal meeting has video it's generally a sign that the meeting doesn't actually need to happen - it's better done through a couple emails or a quick IRC-equivalent chat. Again, outside the world of a scientist I expect this to be different.
I agree (because that's how I operate best). However a large chunk of the population (including many scientists*) can't communicate effectively using text alone, they need the added visual cues one gets from a full -conversation-, (video or face to face), so they can understand it properly. Maybe it's because the other person can see them and this at least makes them focus so as not to appear rude, maybe it's a benign neurological difference, maybe it's just mild illiteracy, I suspect it's all of those and
The right balance (Score:2)
Not just Teleconferencing... (Score:1)
Re:Not just Teleconferencing... (Score:4, Interesting)
It was a test. Did you mention it to them?
[John]
Glad ours isn't setup that way (Score:4, Interesting)
Low-Tech Solution (Score:4, Interesting)
On the box, in handwritten black magic marker, it said "Do not remove unless participating in a video conference!" Not exactly high-tech, but I suppose it was more effective than nothing.
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Schrodinger's corporate spy?
Great (Score:2)
Now all you need is SOUND proofing..
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Like it.
Although, a deft removal of plug from power point would work better to remove the possibility of either video or audio eavesdropping...
little brother is watching too. (Score:3)
At a place i used to work there was this one room that had a camera on a 2 axis pivot/drive. it was creepy when it would turn on and swing around to point right at you.
Re:little brother is watching too. (Score:5, Funny)
Did you work at the front gate of Jabba's palace?
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I wish.
I hear the entertainment there is Awesome!
I can never get those things to bloody well work (Score:2)
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Most fixed video systems are incompatible, so you cannot call any meeting room
Can Skype call out to other video conferencing solutions? I know you can call a telephone number, but I didn't realize you could, for example, call a Google+ Hangout.
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I've often thought about this; do any net based conferencing solutions such as Skype and Hangout have any compatibility to each other? If not, why not? Is the lack of interoperability purely politically-based, or is it a technological problem (that can be solved, all tech problems can be solved)?
I used to work for Tandberg/Cisco (Score:2)
1) I left because I hated the idea of making a $1,000-$100,000 alternative to Skype which is generally better across the board.
2) We had a big ass interop lab and we did do lots of interop testing with other vendors. It was a quiet agreement we had to try and make it easier for us to steal customers from each other.
3) Most of those REALLY expensive video conferencing are purchased becau
Even the "experts" have problems (Score:5, Interesting)
When we bought our video conferencing system, the vendor that implemented gave us their VTC unit's number for testing. Their test VTC system is in their main conference room.
Well, one day we were demoing the unit to a group of people and we called the vendor's unit. They were in the middle of an intense meeting, the CTO of the company was nearly yelling at his staff about a missed sale - I guess he saw the camera swivel into position and yelled "Who turned that bloody thing on! Turn it off!"
Pretty funny from our point of view, and our sales rep called later to apologize.
So if the vendor that implements these for a living can't remember to turn off auto-answer when it's important, how can anyone else? I'm surprised at the number of companies that leave auto-answer turned on. (and am also surprised at the number of companies that re-use conference bridge numbers, I accidentally called into a conference bridge an hour early for a meeting, and got to listen to the vendor talking with a competitor about a new project).
Mostly because of the Inept. (Score:3)
The problem is that CEO's are so stupid they refuse to use the videoconference gear like a normal human. They demand the things auto answer which is a GIANT hole. Plus they refuse to do the smart thing and put in a Border controller. Instead they buy an external IP for the VC gear and put them raw on the internet, Again retarded as hell. But this IS common for executives. They refuse to pay $6500.00 for the device they need and was told would increase security. Instead they demand it's done as cheap as possible.
and this is what happens. Polycom, tandberg, and sony VC equipment on the internet with no firewall and set to auto answer. discover the IP address of a VC system and call it using a Standard H323 software client and you are now listening to the room and looking out the cameras. Hell you can pan and zoom the camera if you want.
The problem is the Executives. They refuse to spend the money to install a secure VC system and they refuse to learn the gear.
Great Punishment (Score:1)
I think these toys could be used for punishment
Force your errant child/dog/cat/whatever to sit in front of one of these eavsdropping session for a while with nothing else to do.
They will shape up fast.
A long time (Score:2)
the auto-answer feature that left those system vulnerable was an effort to strike the right balance between security and usability.
I used to work for an organization that sold a great deal of this equipment. I once asked a vendor if they thought "auto answer" was really a sane default; for devices often connected to displays which power separately, while the device (and its recording implements) remain on line all the time in common deployments.
I got pretty much the same line as in the quote. Which I also found a little astonishing, because I have never had a telephone that even featured "auto answer" let alone defaulted to it, and t
Does anyone have VTC that is actually being used? (Score:2)
VTC is the thing that all executives want to have, but that never gets used. They are bought with great fanfare and everyone wants to use it - for about 90 days - then the controls sit in the corner collecting dust. Having one that is actually powered on and functional would be a novelty.
Boardroom? (Score:2)
Autoanswer a compromise!? (Score:2)
Are you effin' kidding me? Any vendor that claims an autoanswer feature as a compromise between security and usability is one that wouldn't be getting my business! That's just being damn lazy, if you want to take a call, push a button: denial of service through inaction in that case is where the smart money is. Cisco, take heed!