Vigilar’s Press Releases - September 10, 2007

VIGILAR RELEASES OPEN SOURCE VoIP HOPPER TOOL
VoIP Hopper Testing Tool, Combined With Vigilar’s Recommended Best Practices, Helps Secure Growing Number of Integrated Enterprise VoIP Networks

ATLANTA, September 10, 2007 – Vigilar, a leading provider of information security solutions and services, today announced the availability of the “VoIP Hopper”, an automated tool that rapidly runs a VoIP network configuration validation test to help enterprises determine the vulnerability of their VoIP networks. The VoIP Hopper has been released as an open source tool, and can be downloaded from www.vigilar.com/services/voip_hopper.html. The convergence of voice and data into a single network promises to reduce costs, improve quality and simplify management. But as voice exists on the network as yet another application, it poses new challenges to the enterprise and new potential security risks arise. In particular, in a converged VoIP deployment, where a single Ethernet cable provides both the phone service and the computer connection, significant risks arise. Concerns arise around the ability to gain privileged access through publicly accessible phones, such as those found in lobbies, hotel rooms, and conference rooms.

Securing Voice VLANs
The new VoIP Hopper tool allows enterprise IT administrators to test their networks for a specific vulnerability that can occur when the Voice VLAN feature is enabled. With this feature enabled, a PC can be daisy chained to an IP Phone and the connection for both PC and Phone to be trunked through the same physical Ethernet cable. As a result, users can easily gain access to the data network using a VLAN hop from the data network to the voice (known as a VoIP hop). Once on the network, a malicious user could run several different types of attacks against the IP Phone network, including eavesdropping on unencrypted phone calls, or causing interruption of service against the IP Phone network. Worse still, the user could also access the data network, gaining access to mission critical, proprietary data and applications, such as customer data and email or financial applications.

The VoIP Hopper
To discover whether a network may be vulnerable to potential VoIP attacks, Vigilar has developed an assessment method called VoIP Hopping, and an automated assessment tool called the VoIP Hopper. Released as open source, the new VoIP Hopper tool helps IT administrators test their networks to determine if VoIP Hopping possible on their network. The VoIP Hopper enables administrators to quickly and easily test the protection controls of a Layer 2 network to see if a regular PC can mimic the behavior of an IP phone and thereby gain access to the IP Phone network.

“The benefits of VoIP are clear, but there are great risks to implementing a VoIP Network without proper Layer 2 network controls in place,” said Jason Ostrom, researcher for Vigilar and developer of the VoIP Hopper tool. “As attack vectors against the VoIP networks become more common, enterprises must begin protecting themselves against these potential risks. We are pleased to release the VoIP Hopper tool to the community, and hope that it will help security teams and VoIP administrators in their evaluations of the security of their VoIP networks.”

1. Enable Port Security or MAC Address Filtering
2. Enable 802.1x
3. Proper firewall placement or network segmentation

For more information on the VoIP Hopper vulnerability assessment tool, or for a VoIP security consultation, contact Vigilar at www.vigilar.com.

About Vigilar
Since its inception in 2000, Vigilar, a leading provider of information security solutions and services, has focused solely on improving its customers’ security postures. Vigilar’s security expertise is all-encompassing and includes security architecture design, product selection and delivery, implementation services, regulatory compliance services, risk assessments, IT security audits, and IT and security training. In addition, Vigilar offers the ATLAS security-as-a-service, which provides enterprises with managed asset and license tracking, technical support, log management, authentication management and systems maintenance. Vigilar partners with the industry’s most innovative information security technology providers to offer fully integrated solutions that meet risk management, network infrastructure, and compliance needs. Vigilar has offices throughout the Southeast and Southwest United States. For more information, visit www.vigilar.com.