Tom Keating : VoIP & Gadgets Blog
Tom Keating
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VoIP news, trends, and opinions, VoIP reviews. Covering Asterisk, Cisco, Grandstream, Polycom, Microsoft, Vonage, Packet8, etc.

Mark Spencer, Allison Smith & the AstriCon Luncheon - Humor Alert!

October 26, 2011


Today's luncheon at the AstriCon conference was packed to the gills. I saw an open seat at Mark Spencer's table and some Digium folks. But the tables were so crammed close together that I couldn't figure out how to traverse the maze to their table. It didn't help that I was lugging a heavy laptop bag with iPad, laptop, and other gadgets.

AstriCon VoIP Security - $400,000 toll fraud - YIKES!

October 26, 2011


During an AstriCon session on VoIP security the speaker discussed how easy it was to hack voicemail PINs, but not to listen to your voice messages but to initiate "call backs" using spoofed CallerIDs. Essentially, this leverages the "call back" feature that many voicemail systems have to call back the person that left the message.

He then asked the audience for any real world examples of how they were hacked. Several volunteered their stories. I captured one of them where their Elastix server was hacked - due to their parent company locking them out of the server and not updating /patching the server. This resulted in the hackers racking up toll fraud (Korean calls) of $400,000!


Snow at AstriCon

October 26, 2011

Switchvox 5.5 - Sneak Peek!

October 26, 2011

I caught the tail half of Digium's Tristan Barnum's AstriCon session. Tristan Barnum is the Director of Product Marketing for Switchvox at Digium. In her AstriCon session, Tristan stressed how she never ever tells what Switchvox is up to and certainly not what features to expect.

"Switchvox 5.5 is due out the first quarter of the year [2012].

AstriCon Video Snippet of an AstriCon Session

October 25, 2011

360° Panoramic of Astricon Exhibit Floor

October 25, 2011

Digium's Shaun Ruffell, Linux Kernel Developer Speaking at Astricon

October 25, 2011

AstriCon - Panoramic Image of 1st Session

October 25, 2011

LOREX Live Connect Wireless Skype Home Surveillance Review

October 25, 2011

The LOREX Technology Live Connect LW2031 Series is a cool Skype-powered home surveillance system sporting night vision (via IR LEDs) and full color H.264 video. It can be used both for home surveillance, but also as a baby monitor due to its night vision and its portable handheld monitor sporting a color 2.4" LCD. It seemed like an interesting Skype product so I had LOREX send me a LW2031 to review.



Installation
Installing this was pretty straightforward. Two of the three devices - camera & handheld monitor use mini-USB power adapters, which are included.




View from my hotel at Astricon

October 24, 2011

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