Overview of all pages with the tag #Ostel

Ostel.co secure VoIP network partners with Open Hosting

Posted on December 3, 2013 | lee

Ostel.co began as a R&D effort sponsored by The Guardian Project. The question: Is a peer-to-peer secure voice and video call network possible to build with open Internet standards and Open Source software? After two years and tens of thousands of users later, the answer is a resounding YES! Two of the crucial components of any standards based VoIP service are infrastructure to route calls and a database to locate end users. [Read More]

VoIP security architecture in brief

Posted on November 21, 2013 | lee

Voice over IP (VoIP) has been around for a long time. It’s ubiquitous in homes, data centers and carrier networks. Despite this ubiquity, security is rarely a priority. With the combination of a handful of important standard protocols, it is possible to make untappable end to end encryption for an established VoIP call. TLS is the security protocol between the signaling endpoints of the session. It’s the same technology that exists for SSL web sites; ecommerce, secure webmail, Tor and many others use TLS for security. [Read More]

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Jitsi, ostel.co and ISP censorship

Posted on July 22, 2013 | lee

Earlier last week n8fr8 suspected something changed on the ostel.co server, due to many users emailing support specifically about Jitsi connectivity to ostel.co. The common question was “why did it work a few weeks ago and now it doesn’t anymore?” The tl;dr follows, skip to keyword CONCLUSION to hear only the punch line. To support n8fr8’s hypothesis, there was a small change to the server but I wan’t convinced it effected anything since all my clients continued to work properly, including Jitsi. [Read More]

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Carrier Grade, Verizon and the NSA

Posted on June 12, 2013 | lee

Last week Glenn Greenwald at The Guardian broke the news that Verizon has been providing the NSA with metadata about all of the calls over a subsidiary’s network. This subsidiary is called Verizon Business Network Services. It is a privately held company that “owns, operates, monitors, and maintains data and Internet networks in North America, Europe, Asia, Latin America, Australia, Japan, and Africa. The company provides converged communication solutions, such as local and long-distance voice, messaging, and Internet access services. [Read More]

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Lower Bounds of The Narrow Bands

Posted on February 22, 2013 | lee

Voice is becoming a standard feature of any messaging app on mobile phones, in various forms using many different protocols. There’s the old guard, whom I will refer to as “Skype”. Some tough questions have been thrown their way by many groups who support a free Internet. There’s Google Voice, which is not really VoIP. Apple is playing around in the hedge maze inside their walled garden with iChat. There’s also Facebook, who is rolling out voice calling in Canada and the USA in their Messenger app on iOS. [Read More]

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Threats and Usability of Secure Voice

Posted on July 10, 2012 | patch

In my previous post I found that end-to-end encryption with OSTN is both effective and usable. There are two important things the user must be aware of when using OSTN. They must confirm with each phone call that the encryption icon is present and they must correctly complete SAS verification dialog boxes. So on a basic level, encrypted voice just works. But, what does this all mean? This post looks at the threats to security and usability of encrypted ZRTP phone calls in CSipSimple. [Read More]

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A Network Analysis of Encrypted Voice over OSTN

Posted on July 5, 2012 | patch

Introduction to OSTN The OSTN network stands for Open Source Telephony Network. It is a federated network standard for supporting Internet calling with end-to-end encryption ala ZRTP. Its very similar to e-mail in that VOIP calls can be routed to addresses such as user@domain.tld. Its a simple concept, but I believe it to be ground breaking implementation! Never before have I seen such an accessible solution to encrypted VOIP calls. OSTN is platform independent, is a federated network, and it is an open standard such that it is widely adoptable. [Read More]

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OSTN secure VoIP wizard now built into CSipSimple for Android

Posted on May 26, 2012 | n8fr8

If you saw our last post about how to setup your own secure voice-over-IP server instance, then this news is for you. If you are an Android user looking for the best open-source VoIP app, and really need one that can support secure communications, then this post is ALSO for you. CSipSimple, the previously mentioned “best VoIP app”, now includes a wizard for setting up an account configuration for any server which complies with our Open Secure Telephony Network specification. [Read More]

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Singing and Dancing for Encryption

Posted on April 19, 2012 | mark

If you see me dancing or signing with my phone in my hand, I may not just be having a great time, but also creating an encryption key. Part of the issue with security is that it can often be difficult to implement or an added step in what users want to be an easy and seamless process. What if we can make secure and private communications fun and easy? [Read More]

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