Vonage Eavesdropping?

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Jul 13, 2006 Posts: 1

I've been a very happy Vonage customer since I got their service two months ago, but I read something today that concerned me a bit. There is a website here that says it is possible for someone to listen to vonage calls. It even goes on to show a supposed demo/tutorial. Is this true, or is the whole thing faked? It just has me freaked out a bit.

Thanks.

Posts: 646 · Posted: Thu Jul 13, 2006 8:47 pm Post subject:

Anyone who has access to your stream of packets could listen in on your calls, in theory. The audio is sent without any encryption.

Posts: 282 · Posted: Thu Jul 13, 2006 10:27 pm Post subject:

Reading the link you attached, this is for monitoring calls on your LAN, as you need access to the same subnet the Vonage adapter is on - so you're in business if you want to spy on your family!

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 26, 2006 Posts: 3

By the way, anyone with a ten dollar bill can monitor your analog voice line.

Butt Set on Ebay

Posts: 1715 · Posted: Fri Jul 14, 2006 11:15 am Post subject:

ChrisFix wrote:

Reading the link you attached, this is for monitoring calls on your LAN, as you need access to the same subnet the Vonage adapter is on - so you're in business if you want to spy on your family!

Being one the same subnet won't always do it. If you're running a switch instead of a hub, you're not going to see the packets between the Vonage adapter and the 'net from another computer.

Posts: 72 · Full Forum Member Joined: Jun 15, 2006 Posts: 72

VonageTPA wrote:

Being one the same subnet won't always do it. If you're running a switch instead of a hub, you're not going to see the packets between the Vonage adapter and the 'net from another computer.

That depends. A decent switch will let you set up your port to capture traffic from other ports and VLANs. That means you don't even need to be on the same subnet.

Posts: 1715 · Posted: Fri Jul 14, 2006 12:40 pm Post subject:

Agreed...but in the context of Vonage, we're usually referring to consumer-grade gear, which is "dumb" and lacks any management capabilities.

Posts: 72 · Full Forum Member Joined: Jun 15, 2006 Posts: 72

VonageTPA wrote:

Agreed...but in the context of Vonage, we're usually referring to consumer-grade gear, which is "dumb" and lacks any management capabilities.

I thought the thread was about a 3rd party eavesdropping on your Vonage conversation. That means it may be someone anywhere between you and the party to whom you are speaking. I seriously doubt that path has much consumer-rated gear.

Posts: 1715 · Posted: Fri Jul 14, 2006 1:18 pm Post subject:

If you bothered to read the original poster's message & link, you would see we're dealing with good 'ol consumer networking here:

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In such a configuration, a simple hub will work fine (and is what I use when I need to record a call), a simple switch will not. A managed switch can, but chances are that the original poster wouldn't know the difference between managed vs. unmanaged, so I attempted to keep things simple. Chances are that if the person was aware of the intricacies of hubs, switches, TCP/IP and VoIP, they probably would have already known the answer, but they didn't and there's nothing wrong with that.

Overall, a VoIP call is still far more difficult to intercept than analog POTS. Short of living off in a cave up in the hills of West Virginia, you're always going to have the potential for other people to snoop around in your stuff...Just like encryption, when the question of "can it be intercepted and decoded," the answer is always "yes," and the real question should be "how difficult is it?" In general, I'd much rather gain access to the analog POTS lines of someone I'm trying to spy on than it is to pick apart a PRI line or VoIP line. But again, we're talking a home network in this thread, not industrial espionage. Smile

Posts: 282 · Posted: Fri Jul 14, 2006 1:25 pm Post subject:

Thanks for making that complete reply - saved me from doing it!!

The OP was concerned about the web site he linked - believing that anyone could do what is shown to intercept his calls.

The link shows how to capture the call on your own network - so it isn't some giant issue that every neighbor is going to be recording your calls - after all that's what the NSA is for!