We got hacked!
The house phone is an Asterisk PBX and our service provider is Sipgate. They informed me last Thursday that our system was compromised, due to some unusual call activity, but no more info than that. So we changed all our passwords for our SIP account. FAIL.
Saturday and Sunday and Monday saw more calls made; Sipgate support don't work weekends and we didn't notice until the call credit low warning hit my inbox on Monday evening. Another email to Sipgate, this time they tell us that our Asterisk PBX is making the calls, and no we can't have the money back. A quick check and lo! I allowed external guest extensions to connect to the PBX, and I didn't restrict the IP addresses of registering devices. DAMN! Ah well, you live and learn.
Fortunately Sipgate charge up front, and we only put £10 on at a time. The bad guys made off with £4-ish of calls, we don't have auto pay setup and we do get an alarm when the credit goes below £5. All told the most we can loose is £10 and this saves us £15 every month (no line rental).
So a quick crash course in securing Asterisk, and a dollop of iptables firewalling for the PBX and we're back up and running.
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
Friday, January 11, 2013
Three Challenge
Apparently 3/Three don't accept that I own the phone. Worrying; I suspect this is true for all mobile phone companies. Because I don't have the purchase receipt or the details of where it was originally bought, they won't accept that I am the owner. So what?
Well if the original owner phoned them up, read out the IMEI and said the phone had been stolen, they would block the phone. Fortunately they didn't register it, but I can't register it either.
My other motivation is that 3 will unlock the phone for £15.53 (apparently) whereas all the other places want about £24. I shan't be using 3 once the phone is unlocked ...
The system beggars belief to my mind; they sent me a SIM to my postal address, they can see from their network that I am calling from my handset (with the IMEI), you'd think they'd want to encourage people to register. At worst they've got some personal details they can bundle up and sell on (email, phone number address etc.) at best they've got that plus marketing data about the second hand market for their handsets, something they probably need to know about if they want to sell more new handsets.
Hopefully the seller will be forth coming with the store and the date of purchase which can then be used to confirm to three that I actually own the handset now and so it can be registered to me.
(and then promptly unlocked and switch to Giff Gaff :D).
Well if the original owner phoned them up, read out the IMEI and said the phone had been stolen, they would block the phone. Fortunately they didn't register it, but I can't register it either.
My other motivation is that 3 will unlock the phone for £15.53 (apparently) whereas all the other places want about £24. I shan't be using 3 once the phone is unlocked ...
The system beggars belief to my mind; they sent me a SIM to my postal address, they can see from their network that I am calling from my handset (with the IMEI), you'd think they'd want to encourage people to register. At worst they've got some personal details they can bundle up and sell on (email, phone number address etc.) at best they've got that plus marketing data about the second hand market for their handsets, something they probably need to know about if they want to sell more new handsets.
Hopefully the seller will be forth coming with the store and the date of purchase which can then be used to confirm to three that I actually own the handset now and so it can be registered to me.
(and then promptly unlocked and switch to Giff Gaff :D).
Thursday, January 10, 2013
My new year's resolution will be to post more to the blog :D
So, I have bought a new phone and I may have become an early adopter. The phone is the Xperia J (aka st26i), it's locked to three at the moment, and so not in use. I have a free three sim, I've registered it with them and I'm waiting on unlock codes. In the mean time I will be taking it apart and posting photo's.
Three will unlock the handset for a fee (it was originally bought as a pay-as-you-go handset). However you have to register the handset with them. Currently I'm hoping that they will accept paypal as proof of purchase, if not I'm reliant on getting the original purchase receipt from the original owner.
Handset looks good, nice weight, great sound when used with my Nokia Lumia 920 headphones.
Can't wait to get it unlocked so I can use it with my regular network, also looking forward to removing all the Three network branding on the device.
So, I have bought a new phone and I may have become an early adopter. The phone is the Xperia J (aka st26i), it's locked to three at the moment, and so not in use. I have a free three sim, I've registered it with them and I'm waiting on unlock codes. In the mean time I will be taking it apart and posting photo's.
Three will unlock the handset for a fee (it was originally bought as a pay-as-you-go handset). However you have to register the handset with them. Currently I'm hoping that they will accept paypal as proof of purchase, if not I'm reliant on getting the original purchase receipt from the original owner.
Handset looks good, nice weight, great sound when used with my Nokia Lumia 920 headphones.
Can't wait to get it unlocked so I can use it with my regular network, also looking forward to removing all the Three network branding on the device.
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