April 2013 archive

Apr 22

At SIPNOC 2013 This Week Talking About VoIP And IPv6, DNSSEC … and Security, Of Course

Sipnoc 2013 logoOne of the conferences I've found most interesting each year is the SIP Network Operators Conference (SIPNOC) produced by the SIP Forum, a nonprofit industry association. Part of my interest is that it is only an educational conference, i.e. there's no massive exhibit floor or anything... it's all about education. It also brings together pretty much all the major players in the "IP communications" space - certainly within North America but also from around the world.

I'll be there this week in Herndon, Virginia, talking about how VoIP can work over IPv6 and how DNSSEC can make VoIP more secure. The sessions I am directly involved with include:

  • Panel Discussion: Anatomy of a VoIP DMZ
  • VoIP Security BOF
  • Panel Discussion:  IPv6 and SIP - Myth or Reality?
  • Who Are You Really Calling? How DNSSEC Can Help

There are quite a range of other topics on the SIPNOC 2013 agenda, including a number of other talks related to security.  

It should be quite a good show and I'm very much looking forward to it.  I'm particularly looking forward to my "DNSSEC and VoIP" talk on Thursday as that is a topic I've not presented on before... but I think there is some quite valuable potential about using DNSSEC with VoIP.

If you are there at SIPNOC this week, please do say hello!

P.S. While SIPNOC is not being livestreamed, you may find some people tweeting using the hashtag #SIPNOC.

If you found this post interesting or useful, please consider either:

Apr 22

SIP Network Operators Conference (SIPNOC) Starts Tonight In Herndon, Virginia (Featured Blog)

More...

Apr 22

VoIP Security Major Topic This Week at SIPNOC 2013


sipnoc-2013This week the SIP Network Operators Conference (SIPNOC) takes place in Herndon, Virginia, and the SIPNOC agenda turns out to have a great focus on security as it relates to VoIP and IP-based communications in general.   The security-related sessions include:

  • The Growth of Robocalling SPIT
  • Communications Service Providers and Threat Intelligence Sharing
  • Panel Discussion: Anatomy of a VoIP DMZ
  • VoIP Theft: Werewolf or Hydra
  • Who are You Really Calling? How DNSSEC Can Help

There will also be a “VoIP Security Birds-of-a-feather (BOF)” session tomorrow evening where we’ll be sharing information about VoIP security issues and learning from each other about what issues people are seeing.

Sponsored by the SIP Forum, SIPNOC is an educational event that brings together primarily technical and operations staff from a wide range of telecommunications and VoIP service providers.  It is not a trade show, i.e. there is no exhibit hall.  It is just focused on providing educational sessions and networking opportunities.

I’ll be there at SIPNOC speaking about DNSSEC, IPv6 and moderating the VoIP security BOF and the VoIP DMZ panel . I look forward to meeting up again with many of the folks who have attended SIPNOC in the past years.   The event is not livestreamed, but if you are in the DC area and want to attend, registration is still open.

If you are there at SIPNOC 2013, please do say hello!

Apr 22

FIR #700 – 4/22/13 – For Immediate Release

FIR co-host interview coming, update on our call-in line, Viral Video Summit on Friday, B2B Huddle reminder; Quick News: UK agencies' use of unpaid interns investigated, free career advice for Millenials, Qantas gives up PR feed on Twitter, the top 100 banks on social media; Ragan promo; News that Fits: segment from our interview with Donna Papacosta, Michael Netzley's Asia report, Media Monitoring Minute, listener comments, update on Supreme Court decision in Meltwater copyright case, Dan York's report, review of social media in the Boston Marathon Bombing; Neville's on his own next week; music from Cruisebox; and more.

Apr 22

Of iPhones, WiFI Networks… And Forgotten Hotels

Of iPhones, WiFI Networks... And Forgotten Hotels by Dan York

Apr 19

Congratulations to Thailand and the Christmas Islands on their DNSSEC-signed TLDs

dnssecCongratulations to both the Christmas Islands and Thailand for the DNSSEC-signing of two more top-level domains (TLDs):

  • .CX   (Christmas Islands)
  • .ไทย  (Thailand)

In the case of Thailand, their .TH domain was already signed with DNSSEC, but this is now the internationalized domain name (IDN) for .TH.

These two new signed TLDs bring the count to 104 out of 317 TLDs according to ICANN’s TLD report.

Great to see!  (and a tip of the hat to Jeff Moss for tweeting out this news.)

P.S. To understand more about IDNs, Wikipedia has a useful article.

Apr 18

Video: Watch This Bufferbloat Demo and See How Much Faster Internet Access Could Be! (Featured Blog)

What if there was a relatively simple fix that could be applied to home WiFi routers, cable modems and other gateway devices that would dramatically speed up the Internet access through those devices? Many of us may have heard of the "bufferbloat" issue where buffering of packets causes latency and slower Internet connectivity, but at IETF 86 last month in Orlando I got a chance to see the problem with an excellent demonstration by Dave Täht as part of the "Bits-And-Bytes" session. More...

Apr 18

Video – Watch This Bufferbloat Demo And See How Much Faster Internet Access Could Be! (Featured Blog)

More...

Apr 17

Live Today – “IPv4 Exhaustion and the Path to IPv6” from INET Denver (Featured Blog)

If you are interested in the current state of IPv4 address exhaustion within North America as well as the current state of IPv6 deployment, there will be a live stream today, April 17, of the sessions happening at INET Denver starting at 1:00pm US Mountain Daylight Time (UTC-6). The event is subtitled "IPv4 Exhaustion and the Path to IPv6" and you can view the live stream at. More...

Apr 17

Speaking at SIPNOC Next Week About IPv6 and DNSSEC With VoIP

SIPNOC 2013 logoInterested in how voice-over-IP (VoIP) can work with IPv6? Want to know how DNSSEC can add a layer of security to VoIP?  Next week I’ll be speaking on these precise topics at the SIP Network Operators Conference (SIPNOC) sponsored by the SIP Forum and happening in Herndon, Virginia.

SIPNOC is an excellent conference that I’ve very much enjoyed over the past few years that brings together many of the key players involved with moving our telecommunications infrastructure from its PSTN roots into the world of IP communications. Its target is operators and so you have a good number of people there who are providing VoIP services to customers – typically using the SIP protocol.  The schedule is always an interesting mix of operational best practices, security concerns, new technologies, policy and other topics.  This year it’s good to see WebRTC being on the agenda in several places, as that will have an effect on the overall VoIP infrastructure.  (FYI, there is still time to register to attend the SIPNOC event.)

As shown on the SIPNOC schedule, I’ll be participating in these sessions:

IPv6 And SIP – Myth or Reality?
Wednesday, April 24, 10:45-11:45am

In this session we’ll be exploring what is really going on with VoIP and IPv6 and seek to answer questions such as:

  • What’s going on with SIP over IPv6?
  • What are the main challenges to using SIP with IPv6?
  • What do we know about the status of current equipment working with IPv6?
  • What are the SIP Forum and others in the industry doing to help advance the state of the art?
  • Where do we see SIP and IPv6 going?

I’m very much looking forward to the session and have several panelists joining me in a discussion-style panel that should be quite educational and interesting.

Who are You Really Calling? How DNSSEC Can Help
Thursday, April 25, 9:30-10:00am

My goal with this session is to explain what DNSSEC is all about and to look at how it can potentially help to secure a few aspects of VoIP communication.  As I wrote in the abstract:

When Alice calls Bob, how does she know that she is really communicating with Bob’s SIP server? Sure, her software grabs a SRV record for Bob’s server from DNS, but how does Alice’s systems know whether that is the *correct* DNS record for Bob’s server? What if an attacker were able to inject DNS records that redirect Alice’s call to another system? What if there were a way that the SIP endpoints could be certain about the address of the other system they want to call?

I’ll also be talking about the Jitsi softphone that now supports DNSSEC as I wrote about in the past and more recently interviewed Emil Ivov, the Jitsi project lead.  I hope to get some people thinking about the possibility of using DNSSEC and looking into how it can work more with their VoIP infrastructure.

Beyond those sessions, I’ll also be engaging the “VoIP security” side of my background and moderating two sessions on Monday, April 23:

  • 5:15-6:15pm – Panel Discussion:  Anatomy of  a VoIP DMZ
  • 7:30-8:30pm – VoIP Security Birds-of-a-Feather (BOF)

The BOF, in particular, should be interesting as last year it was a very frank and open conversation between operators about the security issues they were facing.  Much good information – and solutions – were exchanged.

I’m very much looking forward to this event and if you are going to be at SIPNOC please do say hello.

At the current time the event is not being livestreamed, but I’m planning to record at least my sessions and make the video available through the Deploy360 YouTube channel.