Blue Box: The VoIP Security Podcast

If any listeners use Digg, Blue Box could use some more digging...

In browsing Digg.com this morning, I noticed that Blue Box is listed in the Digg podcast directory, but it only has a very few "Diggs" (4 before I added my own).  If any of you are Digg users and would be so inclined to go to that page and "digg" the podcast (the count at the top for the overall podcast versus the individual episodes), we'd appreciate the votes.  If enough listeners do this, it might move Blue Box up some of the lists of podcasts (note the "Up and Coming Podcasts" sidebar) and attract additional listeners that way.  Comments are also of course welcome.  Many thanks to the folks who have already "dugg" Blue Box and are responsible for it being there in the first place.  Thanks!

Blue Box "Podcasts by Phone" is back up with a new phone number

For folks wondering whatever happened to the ability to listen to Blue Box podcasts over the phone, the person running the service, "natas", let me know that he had a situation where the provider of the DID phone line stopped providing that service.  He's got the server back up now with a new provider and a new phone number:

  +1-218-339-8544

Now that it's back up, he's going to be updating it with new shows as he only has up to Blue Box #40 in there right now.  So the question of the moment is... who will get done first?  Will natas update the server up through show #48?  Or will I post shows #49 and #50 to the blog?

Seriously, we do appreciate and thank natas for providing this service and we would still be curious to hear people's feedback about whether or not this service is useful to them.  (It's all part of the grand experiment here...)

Shows 49 and 50 are in the queue...

If you are wondering why their haven't been any Blue Box episodes since January 3rd, don't panic, we haven't "podfaded".  Shows 49 and 50 have both been recorded and are sitting in a certain producer's queue for audio post-production and editing.  Unfortunately, that producer, who shall remain nameless but whose last name starts with a "Y", has been a wee bit buried and show #49 ran a bit longer and needs some more editing than many of our episodes.   But they will be out soon....  my apologies for the delay!

Welcome to Blue Box: The VoIP Security Podcast!

Greetings!  Welcome to our little corner of the online world where, from 2005-2008, once a week (roughly) we got together to have a conversation about Voice-over-IP (VoIP) security.  As you look down the page, you'll see that we have two general types of shows. Our "main" shows are where we get together and discuss the latest VoIP security news, offer commentary on topical issues and play and respond to listener comments.  These shows have been numbered consecutively since our start in October 2005 and generally run about 45 minutes.  Our "Special Edition" podcasts (now designated with a "SE" in the show title) are typically special interviews we have done, presentations we have given or panels/presentations from conferences that we have been able to record.  They are quite diverse and so do vary widely in length.  As you'll notice in our main shows, we've developed a wonderful community of listeners and always welcome comments, contributions or other feedback. Thank you for visiting and we hope you enjoy the shows.  Please do send us your thoughts and comments.

Thank you,
Dan York and Jonathan Zar

Shows coming soon...

Where are all the shows that I kept talking about, eh?  Well...this week I had the lethal combination of getting rather sick and losing my voice (rather deadly for a podcaster!) and simultaneously having some large RFPs to which I had to contribute.  Taken together, these factors pretty much wiped out podcast production time this week.  Hang in there, though... LOTS of good stuff coming your way soon.

Signed,
Voiceless-in-Vermont

Listen to Blue Box episodes *by phone*!

As you will hear in the soon-to-be-released show #41, listener "natas" has now made it possible for you to dial a phone number and listen to any of the Blue Box "main" shows over your phone (special edition shows coming at some point soon).  Simply dial:

+1-712-432-5355

and you will be prompted to enter in the number of the show you would like to listen to. You can press the "#" key to fast-forward, the "*" key to rewind, the "0" key to pause/resume and the "1" key to exit the episode and return to the main menu to listen to another episode.  Obviously, when you are done you can just hang up.

Given that this is an experiment, any comments people have on the usefulness (or not) of this service would be appreciated.  You can leave them here or send them in via email or audio.  If you do find the service useful, I would be curious as to why... where are you or what situation are you in where calling in to listen is easier than downloading the MP3 directly and listening?  I'd really like to know.  (natas indicates he is doing this for some other podcasts and is having people call in.)

Many thanks to natas for setting this up and I look forward to any feedback listeners have. 

P.S. For those interested, natas has a phone connection coming from a VoIP service provider into his Asterisk server where he as the IVR set up.  He has uploaded (with our permission) the show MP3s onto his Asterisk server and whichever one is requested is then played for the caller.

One-year anniversary show coming up Oct 24th... if you have any comments/segments you'd like to contribute...

October 24th will mark one-year of doing this show and we're planning to talk a bit about that anniversary: some of the things we've learned - both about VoIP security and also about podcasting - and see what other announcements we can come out with.

If you would like to contribute a comment or segment to that episode, we will most likely be recording that show on Friday, October 20th, so please send in via email or call in any contributions by the end of Thursday, October 19th.  If you want to call in or send in comments in advance but want us to hold them for that show, just say so at the beginning of the audio comment or in an email and we'll hold them for that show.  Many thanks to all of you who have been listening to us over all this time!

Asterisk configuration for SIP voicemail-to-email

As you will hear shortly on show #38, there were two main responses regarding my query about having a SIP address for a comment line that would record a voicemail message and send it to my email address.  One response led to the hosted SIP comment line that we recently announced.  The other response, from Julien Goodwin, was an explanation of how to do this in Asterisk.  While I personally don't have the time to administer systems and run my own Asterisk server, I thought I would post it here for others to see and experiment with.

Julien provided the following configuration, noting that he had not tested this, but it was based off of his working configuration:

---

extensions.conf:

[sip-guest]
s,1,goto(bluebox,1)
i,1,goto(bluebox,1)

bluebox,1,answer
bluebox,n,Voicemail(u1)
bluebox,n,hangup

[some-private-context]
bluebox-admin,1,Voicemailmain(1) ; User side of VM, to set message

sip.conf:
[general]
context = sip-guest
disallow=all                    ; Disallow all codecs
allow=ulaw                      ; Allow codecs in order of preference
allow=alaw
allow=gsm
allow=ilbc
; G729 could also be allowed if your system has a license

voicemail.conf: 
[default]
1 => 12345,Bluebox Comments 
Box,[email protected],,attach=yes|delete=1|format=wav

(NOTE: These last two lines were split for formatting but should
be merged onto a single line.)

---

Thank you, Julien, for providing this and if people find it useful and/or make suggestions/comments, please do leave those as comments to this post.

New SIP comment line - [email protected]

Thanks to Dean over at voipuser.org, along with Martyn Davies who did some great testing, we now have a comment line to which you can connect via SIP.  All you need to do is use your SIP phone to call the address:

[email protected]

(Please note that this is NOT an email address, but rather a SIP address.)  Martyn and Dean have both left messages and it seems to work well. 

If you have a SIP phone with the ability to call across the Internet, please do give it a try and leave us a message.  Feedback is definitely welcome.  Again, many thanks to Dean for setting this up and to Martyn for helping with testing.

P.S. As a bonus, we also now have a PSTN comment line in the UK: +44 844 933 6305.  If you want to give that number a try, please do!

Blue Box #38 coming soon... and if you are at Fall VON, let us know

Well, we recorded Blue Box #38 last week, but Jonathan was in Asia and we had some connectivity issues which required more post-production than I could do before leaving for Fall VON.   It will be out, soon, though.

Also, if any of you are here at Fall VON 2006 in Boston, please do drop us an email. I (Dan) am at the show and will be on a panel of VoIP bloggers tomorrow at 1:30pm Eastern.  I'll also be doing some interviews which I intend to put up as a special edition.

Stay tuned for more...