Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id EAA27254; Mon, 12 May 1997 04:35:03 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 12 May 1997 04:35:03 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199705120835.EAA27254@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V17 #118 TELECOM Digest Mon, 12 May 97 04:35:00 EDT Volume 17 : Issue 118 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Someone Who Became Road Kill on the Info Superhighway (Rick DeMattia) Re: Someone Who Became Road Kill on the Info Superhighway (G Novosielski) Re: Someone Who Became Road Kill on the Info Superhighway (Tony Toews) GSM SIMS and Crypto (Rishab Aiyer Ghosh) Ohio Suburb Attempts to Ban Multiple Area Codes (Rick DeMattia) Re: 911 and Payphones (Chris Farrar) Are Cordless' as Bad as Cellulars? (Bemson) Interesting Article in NY Times on Rural Telephony (John R. Levine) Good Use for Unnecessary Phone Books (Tom Crofford) Re: What's the Status of the Lawsuit Against Destiny Telecom? (centex) Call Display (Caller ID) Formats? (Rob Barnhardt) TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * subscriptions@telecom-digest.org * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: Post Office Box 4621 Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 847-727-5427 Fax: 773-539-4630 ** Article submission address: editor@telecom-digest.org ** Our archives are available for your review/research. The URL is: http://telecom-digest.org (WWW/http only!) They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives (or use our mirror site: ftp ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to archives@telecom-digest.org to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: rad@railnet.nshore.org (Rick DeMattia) Subject: Re: Someone Who Became Road Kill on the Info Superhighway Date: Sat, 10 May 1997 13:59:32 GMT Reply-To: rad@railnet.nshore.org (Rick DeMattia) Organization: Railnet BBS +1 216 786 0476 As quoted from by Paul Robinson : > This doesn't make any sense, because in order to register for the > service, a user's computer will connect to the registration server by > dialing a toll-free number... > call waiting. If they select "disable call waiting", it is smart enough > to give them the *70 code and even allowing them to change it if, for > example, they have pulse dial. Pulse dial is the key to the problem. If the new customer indicates that they have pulse dial, and also indicates that they have call waiting, one ISP package (ATT WORLDNET in an older version which I set up for my father) puts *70 into the dialing prefix. The * gets swallowed and the phone then dials 701800... It took us a while to figure this out - listening to the pulses was a clue. Rick DeMattia ------------------------------ Organization: GPN Consulting Date: Sat, 10 May 1997 13:19:36 -0400 From: Gary Novosielski Subject: Re: Someone Who Became Road Kill on the Information In TELECOM Digest V17 #115, Paul Robinson wrote: > I got a call from a woman who is not a user of the service, but a > victim. ... [P]eople trying to use the service are calling her ... > virtually any hour of the day or night. The woman's number > would be something like 701-8001 in this example... but her number is > completely different from the number of the registration server.... > That's when it hit me. Well, it hit me as soon as I saw the number. As you noted, that software uses the *70 code even for users who have pulse dialing. Most modems will simply ignore the * code when they are in pulse mode, without generating an error. The proper code to use on a pulse line is 1170, and this code will usually work for touch-tone users too. Software designers are universally lax with their dialing strings, so while this programmer was irresponsible, he or she is far from unique. The proper way to dial a number with a leading *67, 1167, *70, 1170, or ANY OTHER feature or dialing code that presents a second dialtone is to send the "W" command (Wait for dial tone) at the appropriate place in the dialing string, i.e.: *70W1-800-123-4567 Had this been done, the woman never would have received those nuisance calls. Since dialing 70 on a pulse-only line would not have produced a second dial tone, the dialing would have failed at that point. The common practice of using a comma merely causes a timed pause, which can never 'fail' as such. Although the W command is supported by every modem I've ever owned (well okay, not my 300 baud acuoustic coupler, but every Hayes compatible of 2400 baud or better) it is almost NEVER used by people writing programs that talk to the modems. The worst offender was the America Online software, which had an internal filter of "valid" characters that could be sent to the modem while dialing. The the letter W was NOT one of the valid characters in their default configuration! The string was something like: 0123456789*#,TP So even if you were sharp enough to replace the code "*70," with "*70W", in the dialing string, the filter would silently strip out the W as if it weren't even there. As a result, the modem would not wait for the second dialtone, and would no longer even pause briefly, since the comma was now missing. This was worse than not modifying it at all. Although the filter itself was user modifiable, it was hidden several levels deep in dialog boxes. And, since the situation never kicked an error message, there was little that would prompt even a knowledgeable user to look for it and add the W character to it. I wrote to AOL about the problem back then, but I haven't dealt with them in years now, so I don't know if they ever fixed it. I know it was a widespread problem with nearly every setup file in their extensive modem configuration library. Gary Novosielski mailto:gpn@techie.com PGPInfo: KeyID A6172089 GPN Consulting http://idt.net/~gpn 2C 5C 32 94 F4 FF 08 10 B6 E0 DE 4F A2 43 79 92 ------------------------------ From: ttoews@telusplanet.net (Tony Toews) Subject: Re: Someone Who Became Road Kill on the Info Superhighway Date: Sun, 11 May 1997 05:20:40 GMT Organization: TELUS Communications Inc. Paul Robinson wrote: > At another place, I work for another company answering Technical Support > telephone calls for an Internet Service Provider. > That's when it hit me. Congratulations on figuring out the problem. Many people would've shrugged their shoulders. Others would have thought about it for a few minutes and forgotten about it. Reminds of the story I heard, likely in this newsgroup, about the woman whose phone number she'd had for many years was similar to a brand new large hotel. She'd get many mis-dialed calls for the hotel. She tried talking to someone at the hotel but get a rude reception. She then started confirming all the room reservations she got. Then the front desk had to deal with all the angry customers who had no reservations. They got a very bad reputation. Tony Toews, Independent Computer Consultant The Year 2000 crisis: Will my parents or your grand parents still be receiving their pension in January, 2000? See www.granite.ab.ca/year2000 for more info. Microsoft Access Hints, Tips & Accounting Systems at www.granite.ab.ca/accsmstr.htm [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The newspapers here reported last week that a family in Ohio had a phone number very similar to Papa Don's Pizza. They were getting a lot of wrong number calls to order pizza, so they put an answering machine on their line identifying themselves as Papa John's Pizza and advising the caller that the Board of Health had closed them down. The recording further suggested ordering from Pizza Hut or Dominoes. The real Papa Don's sued them on account of it and a judge ordered the family to change the message on their answering machine. Regards the woman getting phone calls for the hotel, admittedly the hotel should not have been rude to her about it, but at the same time I wonder what she expected *them* to do about it. Ignorance, they say, is bliss, and a lot of Americans are very happy people. By taking reservations, she was defrauding the hotel. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Rishab Aiyer Ghosh Subject: GSM SIMS and Crypto Date: Sat, 10 May 1997 14:31:42 +-5-30 John R. Covert writes: > The GSM SIM cards, it turns out, are not just generic devices storing > subscriber information for retrieval by the mobile telephone. The > subscriber's key, Ki, is stored within the card and not revealed to a > mobile set. Instead, the GSM encryption algorithm, A5, is implemented > in the microprocessor on board the SIM card. GSM is great in terms of security, compared with any other standard. The sub key is just for authentication, and is not the key used for call encryption. that is generated on the fly, usually once per call but technically possible to generate any number of encryption keys. apart from a5, the traffic encryption protocol, there are others, incl a8, the authentication protocol. almost everything is implemented on a chip on the sim card, which is what makes it so secure in practical terms. e.g. we all know about sim portability - use on any phone. but you can also protect your phone from being stolen by locking it to your sim - so it won't work with another card. > Revealed details about the A5 algorithm are sketchy, but I read a paper > by Ross Anderson (http://chem.leeds.ac.uk/ICAMS/people/jon/a5.html) as > well as a better one by David Margrave of George Mason University. The I posted long ago on cypherpunks and in Cellular-Digest on the gsm auth/crypto cycle. you'll probably find that if you search for "gsm crypto" or something like that on the web, as versions of that post seem to have been archived all over the place. i think www.l0pht.com has a copy, and i can probably excavate my archives and find it. -rishab First Monday - The Peer-Reviewed Journal on the Internet http://www.firstmonday.dk/ Munksgaard International Publishers, Copenhagen Managing Editor - Rishab Aiyer Ghosh (ghosh@firstmonday.dk) Mobile +91 11 98110 14574; Fax +91 11 2209608; Tel +91 11 2454717 A4/204 Ekta Apts., 9 Indraprastha Extn, New Delhi 110092 INDIA ------------------------------ From: rad@railnet.nshore.org (Rick DeMattia) Subject: Ohio Suburb Attempts to Ban Multiple Area Codes Date: Sat, 10 May 1997 13:49:09 GMT Reply-To: rad@railnet.nshore.org (Rick DeMattia) Organization: Railnet BBS +1 216 786 0476 I heard on the radio yesterday that the City of Parma, a suburb of Cleveland OH, is considering legislation which would require that all telephones within the municipal boundaries be in the same area code. Presumably this is in response to the pending split of 216. Whether municipal government has authority over the topic is another issue, of course. Rick DeMattia [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: That is pathetic. That is almost as bad as the time the Chicago City Council passed an ordinance saying that Chicago was a 'nuclear free zone' and that the manufacture of nuclear weapons within the city limits was prohibited. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Chris Farrar Subject: Re: 911 and Payphones Date: Sat, 10 May 1997 18:38:51 -0400 Organization: Sympatico Reply-To: cfarrar@sympatico.ca Mark J. Cuccia wrote: > A few years back, here in New Orleans, the city was going to fine > businesses or impose a surcharge on false alarms from burglar alarm or > fire alarm systems when the 'official' police or fire department (or > one of the other law enforcement jurisdictions) answered the call. Cities in Ontario are already doing that. Some are even going so far as to charge a "licencing fee" for even having a Burglar Alarm. > As for false calls to 911, a few months back, I seem to remember that > the city's 911 system was *NOT* going to send out a police car to > investigate if the 'hang-up' call came from a payphone. Just as in other > major metro areas, here in New Orleans, fools or kids dial 911, usually > from payphones, just for the sick 'fun' of it. Do they still respond when it isn't from a payphone? Here, dialing 911 and dropping the phone will result in the location receiving a tiered responce, basically Fire, Police, and Ambulance responding. Chris Farrar | cfarrar@sympatico.ca | Amateur Radio, a VE3CFX | fax +1-905-457-8236 | national resource PGPkey Fingerprint = 3B 64 28 7A 8C F8 4E 71 AE E8 85 31 35 B9 44 B2 ------------------------------ From: Bemson Subject: Are Cordless' as Bad as Cellulars? Date: Mon, 12 May 1997 00:23:27 -0400 Organization: Gilgamesh Technologies & Designs Firm Reply-To: waf6@columbia.edu Hello, My family and I benefited greatly from a research report posted about the dangers of cellular phone usage in association with brain tumors and cancers. I know little to nothing about phones or electronics, so I would like to know if cordless phones pose a similar threat, or to understand how the differences in engineering make have not caused a concern for cordless phones. T,T,TIA Best O'Luck! Bemson ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 May 1997 00:50:52 EDT From: John R Levine Subject: Interesting Article in NY Times on Rural Telephony It's the lead article in the business section of today's (Monday's) Times. Also on the web at: http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/financial/rural-phoneservice.html (registration required but no charge, at least to readers in the U.S.) They profile a rural Vermont phone company and point out the threat that the new telecom act poses to universal service in rural areas, as universal service fund money is siphoned off to new worthy activities unrelated to the original goals of USF. Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner Finger for PGP key, f'print = 3A 5B D0 3F D9 A0 6A A4 2D AC 1E 9E A6 36 A3 47 PS: Incidentally, the guy in the picture installing the phone is my uncle. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 11 May 1997 19:43:37 -0500 From: Tom Crofford Reply-To: tomc@xeta.com Organization: XETA Corporation Subject: Good Use for Unnecessary Phone Books Pat, Yesterday was Mother's Day and we were having lunch with my mother-in-law. We're sitting at the dining room table eating some pizza and playing dominoes. My son notices a phone book under the table so he asks why it's there. My mother-in-law says she has trouble with chairs being too high, as she's about 5 feet tall. She gets tons of unrequested phone books, so she's using one as a foot prop under the dining room table. She further enhanced her phone book by wrapping it with plastic wrap, so it won't open while she's using it in this manner. You might pass along this low tech use of unnecessary phone books to the folks on your mailing list. I'm sure there are many more good uses for items like this we all receive every day. Thanks, Tom Crofford tomc@xeta.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I am sorry I neglected over the weekend to send out a note of cheer to all you Mothers in the digest audience. As the late Mike Royko once pointed out, it is unfortunate that a word which once stood for decency and the family and all that now can be considered the short form of a two-word obscene expression. Or, as the little ten year old kids on the school playground say when they are arguing with one another, 'Yo Mama!' PAT] ------------------------------ From: Central Texas Alliance Subject: Re: What's the Status of the Lawsuit Against Destiny Telecom? Date: Sun, 11 May 1997 10:57:19 -0500 Organization: Central Texas Alliance of Independent Representatives Reply-To: CentexDestiny@CyberServices.com Liz Ashraph wrote: > Does anyone know if the lawsuit against Destiny has been settled or > where that stands? Destiny Telecomm settles lawsuit with DAs, state No wrongdoing found; Destiny signs to save Oakland jobs Oakland (March 19) -- In a good-faith effort to keep its fast growing telecommunications company and jobs in Oakland -- and without admitting wrongdoing -- Destiny Telecomm settled a controversial lawsuit brought by the District Attorneys of Almeda, Monterey and the state Attorney General. Destiny attorneys contend that the company and its employees were targeted by misguided officials in an action that put hundreds of Oakland jobs at risk. Destiny and the government officials signed the agreement in order to end the litigation. The settlement contains reporting requirements, but does not require Destiny to make any substantive changes in its national marketing and sales program. The judgement, states it is not an "admission or evidence of wrongdoing" by Destiny. The settlement requires Destiny to pay $1.6 million to the three agencies. Destiny is here to stay! For more information on Destiny simply mailto:CentexDestiny@CyberServices.com or visit our Webpage at http://www.isot.com/personal/jeffurs/destiny.htm or our corporate site at http:/www.dtiinc.com ------------------------------ From: robertb@iaw.com (Rob Barnhardt) Subject: Call Display (Caller ID) Formats? Reply-To: robertb@iaw.com Organization: Rob Barnhardt Date: Sat, 10 May 1997 23:48:52 GMT (Please skip to the end if you just want to see the question. :) I've looked at a bunch of Caller ID utilities and found none that do everything I'd like - and those that come closest are, in my opinion, just too damn bloated. (So, write your own, you whiner. Okay. >:) (To the authors of those Caller ID programs - I might diss your code, but I do completely respect your ability to gather information. >:) I've had very little luck in finding concrete information on 'real-world' Caller ID formats. After finding what initially appeared to be a gold-mine - - and dutifully following just about every link there, I now know how to use several ICs to decode Caller ID, and I know what various legislatures have had to say about Caller ID and privacy. I feel really well-informed - just not in the way I had hoped. >:) No flame intended; it's a fine links page for general Caller ID info. Right. I then retrieved complete manuals for several of the major manufacturers' Caller ID-supporting modems, and therein learned how to configure those modems to report Caller ID information - which will be useful - but I still haven't found what I'm looking for. (tm) Anyhow, to the question: is there a good source for Caller ID formats out there? I'm interested in info for any country, any device, just so long as it's reasonably solid; frustratingly, among those documents that have provided relevant information, I don't think I've found _two_ that agreed completely. Do I have to start reverse-engineering Visual Basic programs? (Shh. >:) Thanks, Rob Barnhardt, robertb@iaw.com. ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V17 #118 ******************************