On 03/07/2011 01:08 AM, Madovsky wrote:
I think it's more hard for a guy to hack your US pstn line if he lives in Australia... fax on internet can be hacked from everywhere... There used to be some truth in that, a long time ago. It ended when arbitrary hops of ordinary PSTN calls started to be carried over IP networks. When you call from a PSTN FAX to a PSTN FAX you have little idea how the call travels. Its the same with phone banking by DTMF, and other services where people regularly send sensitive information. Its hard to mount a focussed attack on a particular person by trawling through fairly arbitrary IP communications, but you can sure harvest a lot of interesting material from a long distance these days.
Interestingly, the FAX standards do include security feature options, but I've never seen them used. The documentation lacks clarity, and I'm not sure how well most T.38 systems would handle them, but they are there. Steve