Monday, 19. April 2010
Amazon Brute Force SIP Attacks – Dave Michels Interviews Me.
Shortly After my “SIP Brute Force Attack Originating From Amazon EC2 Hosts” post, Dave Michels interviewed me for an article Dark Side of the Cloud. This is that interview:
Dave:Â Â What do you believe the intent was of the attacks? Free long distance?
Stu: Certainly free long distance would be one reason… But there are many other reasons to hijack a SIP account. I’m sure that organized crime would pay for a block of active SIP logins. They could use them to circumvent surveillance, or possibly use them for fraudulent boiler room calls about extended warranties and such.
Remember, most folks still believe that the Telephone System is secure… They tend to believe someone who is calling them.
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Sunday, 11. April 2010
SIP Brute Force Attack Originating From Amazon EC2 Hosts.
I woke up Saturday morning to find strangely high network activity on some of our inbound connections. After a quick review, it turned out that most of the traffic was going into several of our hosted PBX systems. After a little more digging, I discovered that several systems on the Amazon EC2 network were preforming brute force attacks, against our VoIP servers. They were attempting to guess user names and passwords for our SIP clients. I immediately blocked all traffic from the attacking IPs and examined the logs. Thankfully, I found that non of the attacks had succeeded in guessing passwords.
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Friday, 12. March 2010
The Technology of SCALE8x – A Post Event Review. PART – 2
This is the second installment all about the technologies used for SCALE8x. The first installment dealt with the services that the technology group has setup and maintains for the event year round. This installment will cover the pre-show setup that went into the technologies that were used at the show.
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Monday, 22. February 2010
The Technology of SCALE8x – A Post Event Review. PART – 1
Every February in Los Angeles CA, a group of dedicated volunteers get together to put on what many believe to be the largest all volunteer organized open source technology conventions in the US. This three day event features talks and exhibits specifically targeted at Open Source users, programmers, and system administrators.
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Tuesday, 16. February 2010
S.C.A.L.E is coming! Feb. 19-21!
Sorry to take so long between posts… But I’ve been kinda busy getting ready for The So. Cal Linux Expo, coming up in Los Angeles February 19th through the 21st. This is the premier open source show on the west coast! I’ll be there as the network architect this year, with Mike Maki taking over my position as Tech Committee Chairperson.
This year, we are pushing the envelope by adding IPv6 connectivity network wide. As near as we all can gather, this makes us the first show of this type to provide a dual stack network show wide!
If you are in to opensource, or getting pressure to reduce your IT costs, come enjoy the show! A quick sumary:
- Over 80 exhibitor booths
- Over 100 talks and presentations
- B.O.F. events
- Gatherings and Fun & Games
See their web page for details http://www.socallinuxexpo.org.
Come be a part!
Hope to see you there.
– Stu
Friday, 28. August 2009
This can’t be right. It’s going to cost $1000.00 just for software?
I must admit, this is quite a surprise, even for me. While pricing a PC for a client, I was shocked when I calculated the total cost of the software that they are required to use for their business.
The cost of software is one of those things that most business owners understand, but very few employees grasp. While there are open source alternatives available for these software packages, chances are that the client will elect to purchase this software, but as always, I’ll sure give him the option to try something different.
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Thursday, 16. July 2009
Is the Internet killing Main Street, or was it already dead?
When I was a kid, I could walk down Las Tunas Blvd. and not go more then 3 store fronts without knowing the the business owner’s names. Well, at least their family names, because back then you called people by their last name, usually preceded by a Mr., Mrs. or Miss.
That’s not to say that there weren’t Super Markets and Department Stores. But you still went down to the corner drug store to get your prescriptions, paper and office supplies were purchased from the local stationary store, and small toy stores and hobby shops were where I would go and dream of all the fun I could have for the price of a months allowance.
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