20 July 2001

Phone Network + Internet = SNAFU Doc points to an article by widely respected security consultant Bruce Schneier on InternetWeek, on the huge implications of the work currently in progress to hook up the public phone network to the Internet. Bruce talks about the fundamental way this would adversely affect public phone systems. He concludes: Opening the network is a good thing from the perspective of creating innovative new services, speeding up development cycles, adding value to data and voice. Yet when we do this, we open up the potential for the bad things as well. Soon the phone network will become just like the Internet. Putting control of telephony networks on the Internet means anyone can hack a service provider's network over the Web. These protocols will turn control over to authorised, and also unauthorised, Internet control. If you think phone phreaking, in which sophisticated hackers break into public network and switches, was bad, just wait until anyone can do it. 3:51:29 PM