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Technology Stocks : The *NEW* Frank Coluccio Technology Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: fred g who wrote (10937)	8/7/2005 1:21:43 PM
From: extremelabsinc	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 46821

Not and not. Consider: Many organizations have their PBXs buttoned up. But the number of companies that actually audit their phone bills to know that they're not being cracked is indeed few. The PSTN, that is to say the old analog network, is now cable, DSL, and even direct VoIP. To each residence and business, there's at minimum, coax or twisted pair. With luck, on a good day, it's fiber. The old PSTN still exists, but in other ways, the circuits like T1s/DS0/DS1/DS3 and the refrigerator-sized CSUs are gone. More likely, it's back to some kind of cable, but we don't really care. That's because services are now abstracted from a 1A3 or basic service units/channels of ten years ago. The telcos and carriers got smart and cut down the mess. Good for them and us. What they did and continue to do is to rape and pillage like they were the old Bell System. One of the covers of 2600 Magazine recently was a drawing of a Chinese Soldier with the old Bell logo above him... with the Forbidden CIty in the background. The caption: We Unite Again. Blue boxing is as old as the hills. Now aday, there are IVR cracks, voice mail hacks (imagine: every VM server I ever saw has the password 1111 and most users change it to 1234 after-- ot their own extension #). This is security? Centrex is another tragedy looking for a spot marked X. But I digress. The Internet is the PSTN-- somewhere between the last mile and the nearest CO. Make no mistake about that. Crossbar brass switches are long gone. Racks of CSUs are long gone. Gateways are today. Are they safe? Perhaps-- there's not much fun in cracking them. But the same entrances that CALEA uses can be the buttress for various kinds of cracking attempts. Do the cracks exist? Pull your head out of the hole in the sand. Are they being cracked? Ditto. Tom