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   Steve Bellovin (stevebellovin@mastodon.lawprofs.org)'s status on Sunday, 10-Mar-2024 11:16:48 JST Steve Bellovin

   in reply to

   • Matt Blaze
   • Karl Auerbach
   • Glen Turner
   • Chris Samuel

   @karlauerbach @chris_bloke @glent @mattblaze Getting SIP security as good as possible was a continual challenge. As Security AD, I once blocked some RFC on security grounds, and had to defend my actions at a lunch surrounded by annoyed SIP folks. I had to pull out my laptop and show them exactly how the attack would work before they believed me. (It was, as I recall, a redirection request that was not properly authenticated.)

   • Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: likes this.
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     Karl Auerbach (karlauerbach@sfba.social)'s status on Sunday, 10-Mar-2024 11:16:49 JST Karl Auerbach

     in reply to

     • Matt Blaze
     • Glen Turner
     • Chris Samuel

     @SteveBellovin @chris_bloke @glent @mattblaze I have long considered SIP based VoIP to be vulnerable to the same kind of "route it through my country rather than yours" attack.

     SIP is built to use proxies and it tends to use SRV records to find those proxies. If one gets hold of DNS in a way to forge those SRV responses, one can send the SIP data stream (typically RTP) via a spying proxy. Usually any encryption to the actual media stream is piecemeal source=>proxy=>proxy=>destination.

     And watching the SIP headers, which also tend to be visible at proxies, opens the door to traffic analysis.

     I wrote about this long ago...

     What Could You Do With Your Own Root Server?

     https://www.cavebear.com/old_cbblog/000232.html

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     Steve Bellovin (stevebellovin@mastodon.lawprofs.org)'s status on Sunday, 10-Mar-2024 11:16:50 JST Steve Bellovin

     in reply to

     • Matt Blaze
     • Karl Auerbach
     • Glen Turner
     • Chris Samuel

     @chris_bloke @glent @mattblaze @karlauerbach So the British action in 1914 was actually the product of a strategy devised decades earlier. (Btw, Paul M Kennedy, Imperial Cable Communications and Strategy, 1870-1914, 86 English Historical Review 728 (1971), http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/563928?uid=2&uid=4&sid=21103708309471 also has details, and for some folks is more accessible than Headrick's book.) Britain tried to route its communications through British-controlled territories, and tried to route other countries communications, too…

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     Chris Samuel (chris_bloke@mastodon.acm.org)'s status on Sunday, 10-Mar-2024 11:16:51 JST Chris Samuel

     in reply to

     • Matt Blaze
     • Karl Auerbach
     • Glen Turner

     @glent @mattblaze @SteveBellovin @karlauerbach found this brief article on the history of the security of undersea cables (telegraphic onwards) interesting - more on the who and where rather than the outcomes - eg it mentions the UK cutting German telegraph cables on the outbreak of WW1 but not the Zimmerman telegram. https://www.maritimefoundation.uk/publications/maritime-2023/the-security-of-subsea-cables-an-enduring-naval-challenge/

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     Glen Turner (glent@aus.social)'s status on Sunday, 10-Mar-2024 11:16:52 JST Glen Turner

     in reply to

     • Matt Blaze
     • Karl Auerbach

     @mattblaze @SteveBellovin @karlauerbach Even though the departure could not be secret, there was could be tight security.

     Napoleon famously kept the destination of his Mediterranean invasion fleet secret, to inhibit pursuit by the Royal Navy, with its faster warship-only fleet. Nelson sailed back and forth across the Med, catching news of where Bonaparte had been, only catching up with the French fleet after they had already disembarked Napoleon and his army in Alexandria, from where they rapidly conquered Egypt (a complex power play to separate India from Britian, the plunder of India paying for the British forces in the Napoleonic Wars).

     Then, being Nelson, he wiped out the warships of the French fleet in the Battle of the Nile despite the French pre-prepared and advantageous position. (The streets of my Port Adelaide -- an Empire maritime town -- are named after this battle, it was widely admired as his technically best victory.)

     Anyways, it's clear what a difference even one telegram could have made, and why the British Empire paid such large sums for undersea cables, initially of short life.

   • Embed this notice
     Matt Blaze (mattblaze@federate.social)'s status on Sunday, 10-Mar-2024 11:16:53 JST Matt Blaze

     in reply to

     • Karl Auerbach

     @SteveBellovin @karlauerbach Yes, I love the point about how they used to not bother keeping the movement of warships secret, since the news of the ship leaving port couldn't travel faster than the ship itself.

   • Embed this notice
     Steve Bellovin (stevebellovin@mastodon.lawprofs.org)'s status on Sunday, 10-Mar-2024 11:16:55 JST Steve Bellovin

     in reply to

     • Matt Blaze
     • Karl Auerbach

     @karlauerbach @mattblaze You'd enjoy Standage's book, if you haven't read it. Briefly, his thesis is that the telegraph network was a bigger change in human society than the Internet, since it was the first way to communicate rapidly across very long distances.

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     Karl Auerbach (karlauerbach@sfba.social)'s status on Sunday, 10-Mar-2024 11:16:56 JST Karl Auerbach

     in reply to

     • Matt Blaze

     @SteveBellovin @mattblaze Thanks for the pointer to that article.

     I've long considered the electrical telegraph system to be the first electrical packet switching network. Telegrams are an analog to IP packets - and often several telegrams had to be assembled to form a more complete message - and telegrams were relayed, store-and-forward style. I do not know how the telegraph systems figured out telegram routing.

   • Embed this notice
     Steve Bellovin (stevebellovin@mastodon.lawprofs.org)'s status on Sunday, 10-Mar-2024 11:16:57 JST Steve Bellovin

     in reply to

     • Matt Blaze
     • Karl Auerbach

     @mattblaze @karlauerbach Btw, one of my favorite stories about railroad and communications history is at https://www.telegraph-history.org/charles-minot/. I won't try to summarize it…

   • Embed this notice
     Steve Bellovin (stevebellovin@mastodon.lawprofs.org)'s status on Sunday, 10-Mar-2024 11:16:59 JST Steve Bellovin

     in reply to

     • Matt Blaze
     • Karl Auerbach

     @mattblaze @karlauerbach Ordered!

   • Embed this notice
     Matt Blaze (mattblaze@federate.social)'s status on Sunday, 10-Mar-2024 11:17:00 JST Matt Blaze

     in reply to

     • Karl Auerbach

     @karlauerbach @SteveBellovin Thanks - several copies on ebay.

   • Embed this notice
     Karl Auerbach (karlauerbach@sfba.social)'s status on Sunday, 10-Mar-2024 11:17:01 JST Karl Auerbach

     in reply to

     • Matt Blaze

     @mattblaze @SteveBellovin It's "the Search for Safety - A History of Railroad Signals and the People Who Made Them"

     by the Union Switch & Signal Division, American Standard Inc. 1981

     No ISBN number.

   • Embed this notice
     Matt Blaze (mattblaze@federate.social)'s status on Sunday, 10-Mar-2024 11:17:02 JST Matt Blaze

     in reply to

     • Karl Auerbach

     @karlauerbach @SteveBellovin Oh, that sounds quite interesting!

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     Karl Auerbach (karlauerbach@sfba.social)'s status on Sunday, 10-Mar-2024 11:17:03 JST Karl Auerbach

     in reply to

     • Matt Blaze

     @SteveBellovin @mattblaze Orders? Orders?! We don't need no stinkin' orders!!

     By-the-way, I have an interesting book from the Union Signal Company about the history of railroad signals. It's really a book about Murphy's law - pretty much everything that could have possibly gone wrong with signals has. at one time or another, gone wrong.

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     Steve Bellovin (stevebellovin@mastodon.lawprofs.org)'s status on Sunday, 10-Mar-2024 11:17:05 JST Steve Bellovin

     in reply to

     • Matt Blaze

     @mattblaze “He mounted to his cabin with his orders in his hand”…

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     Matt Blaze (mattblaze@federate.social)'s status on Sunday, 10-Mar-2024 11:17:07 JST Matt Blaze

     Commuter Trains, Ewing, NJ, 2010.

     All the pixels at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/4377309058

     #photography