PhoneSweep is a commercial war dialer from the Sandstorm Enterprises. Since the term war dialer has been associated with amateur tools created by hackers for malicious purposes, the company likes to classify PhoneSweep as a “telephone line scanner”.
Description
Almost all the computers deployed today come with an inbuilt modem. These devices though seldom used, can pose as serious vulnerabilities in a network especially in a corporate environment employing thousands of such devices. Corporates normally spend huge amounts of money on securing their network using firewalls and other security devices. However what mostly is ignored are the lowly modems attached to almost every computer system in their network.
Hackers can take advantage of these devices by methods like war dialing. Here a hacker by the use of war dialing tools try to dial all possible combinations of telephone numbers in the organization. These tools can then identify the type of device attached to the modem, like a server, fax machine. Special mechanisms are embedded in these to identifying the different ways in which the call is terminated. For example calls answered by automated systems are normally answered in a single ring and by a human user takes more rings. Such devices when compromised can serve as backdoors to the entire corporate network. War dialing can be done either to a single organization or to a particular geographical location.
Unlike the hacker tools available for war dialing, PhoneSweep is more of a commercial ethical tool which helps organizations track down the vulnerabilities in their system. Prior to the release of PhoneSweep the only tools available to the security personals were freeware like ToneLoc and THC-Scan which could not be reliable as it was designed mostly by hackers and could introduce vulnerabilities in the system.
Features
The following features of PhoneSweep has made it an ideal phone line analyzing tool for corporates.
i. Trusted source
Since the software comes from a trusted source, corporates can make sure that it does not introduce any kind of vulnerabilities into the system. This is unlike the freeware previously available which used to have undocumented bugs and used to infect the systems on which they were installed.
ii. Friendly interface
The application comes with an inbuilt GUI based interface which makes it easy to configure and use even by the novice. It is currently available for all versions of Windows. However for more advanced users it comes with the CLI configuration method.
iii. Hardware licensing
Another feature which has made the software popular is hardware licensing. This means that in order to use the software there need to be a dongle which is available for the USB or the parallel port. Without this hardware licensing, the program is useless. Hence it can be assured that the software will never be shared with unauthorized users who can misuse it for their malicious needs.
iv. Updated
The large support for this software has the advantage that the program is updated all the time. At this time PhoneSweep can detect close to over 460 systems and keeps on adding support for new devices
Usage options
Two popular usage options available with this tool is described below.
i. Penetration testing
PhoneSweep has a feature which is called penetration testing which along with identifying the vulnerabilities, also tries to break into the systems. This is done by identifying the type of system and checking if these devices can be easily penetrated using default passwords or brute force attack.
ii. Differential scanning
Any war dialing tools takes a huge amount of time for scanning an entire corporate environment. However PhoneSweep comes with a feature called differential scanning which tries to discover the changes which has been made in the network since the last scan. This considerably reduces the scan times for future scans
Output
The output of this scanning tool is available as a well formatted rtf file. This makes it easier for a user to sort the results by using various files. The results can be seen by the number dialed, the type of device on the other end and many other option. It also has the additional feature to import the results onto an excel graph which can gives a pictorial representation of the vulnerabilities and the percentage of threats to each type of discovered device.
Uses of war dialer tools to the hacker
As already mentioned this tool is not available to the normal hacker due to licensing restrictions. Moreover the tool is made available at a high cost ($1000 - $10000) which makes it impossible for a novice to get his hands on this corporate tool.
However, freely available war dialing tools can provide a wealth of information to hackers. Though much inefficient than the PhoneSweep, these tools can be used successfully with little patience and time. These tools can be used discover the holes in devices attached to unprotected modems. Through these reconnaissance attacks, the type of system at the other end can be easily discovered. Latter an attacker can launch system specific attacks on there vulnerable devices and create backdoors to the entire network
Conclusion
It has been a blessing to the corporate security offices that a tool like PhoneSweep is at their disposal. Previously they had to rely on other freeware which had greater chances of introducing viruses or threats into the system. Some of these were even used to report back to the designer about the holes in a corporate network. However Sandstorm has made it impossible for the hackers to get their hand on this ethical software. Though it comes at a huge cost, any corporate wishing to keep their system free from undiscovered threats associated with phone lines should have PhoneSweep as part of their security mechanism.
References:
Sandstorm.net
Sans.com
Wikipedia
Description
Almost all the computers deployed today come with an inbuilt modem. These devices though seldom used, can pose as serious vulnerabilities in a network especially in a corporate environment employing thousands of such devices. Corporates normally spend huge amounts of money on securing their network using firewalls and other security devices. However what mostly is ignored are the lowly modems attached to almost every computer system in their network.
Hackers can take advantage of these devices by methods like war dialing. Here a hacker by the use of war dialing tools try to dial all possible combinations of telephone numbers in the organization. These tools can then identify the type of device attached to the modem, like a server, fax machine. Special mechanisms are embedded in these to identifying the different ways in which the call is terminated. For example calls answered by automated systems are normally answered in a single ring and by a human user takes more rings. Such devices when compromised can serve as backdoors to the entire corporate network. War dialing can be done either to a single organization or to a particular geographical location.
Unlike the hacker tools available for war dialing, PhoneSweep is more of a commercial ethical tool which helps organizations track down the vulnerabilities in their system. Prior to the release of PhoneSweep the only tools available to the security personals were freeware like ToneLoc and THC-Scan which could not be reliable as it was designed mostly by hackers and could introduce vulnerabilities in the system.
Features
The following features of PhoneSweep has made it an ideal phone line analyzing tool for corporates.
i. Trusted source
Since the software comes from a trusted source, corporates can make sure that it does not introduce any kind of vulnerabilities into the system. This is unlike the freeware previously available which used to have undocumented bugs and used to infect the systems on which they were installed.
ii. Friendly interface
The application comes with an inbuilt GUI based interface which makes it easy to configure and use even by the novice. It is currently available for all versions of Windows. However for more advanced users it comes with the CLI configuration method.
iii. Hardware licensing
Another feature which has made the software popular is hardware licensing. This means that in order to use the software there need to be a dongle which is available for the USB or the parallel port. Without this hardware licensing, the program is useless. Hence it can be assured that the software will never be shared with unauthorized users who can misuse it for their malicious needs.
iv. Updated
The large support for this software has the advantage that the program is updated all the time. At this time PhoneSweep can detect close to over 460 systems and keeps on adding support for new devices
Usage options
Two popular usage options available with this tool is described below.
i. Penetration testing
PhoneSweep has a feature which is called penetration testing which along with identifying the vulnerabilities, also tries to break into the systems. This is done by identifying the type of system and checking if these devices can be easily penetrated using default passwords or brute force attack.
ii. Differential scanning
Any war dialing tools takes a huge amount of time for scanning an entire corporate environment. However PhoneSweep comes with a feature called differential scanning which tries to discover the changes which has been made in the network since the last scan. This considerably reduces the scan times for future scans
Output
The output of this scanning tool is available as a well formatted rtf file. This makes it easier for a user to sort the results by using various files. The results can be seen by the number dialed, the type of device on the other end and many other option. It also has the additional feature to import the results onto an excel graph which can gives a pictorial representation of the vulnerabilities and the percentage of threats to each type of discovered device.
Uses of war dialer tools to the hacker
As already mentioned this tool is not available to the normal hacker due to licensing restrictions. Moreover the tool is made available at a high cost ($1000 - $10000) which makes it impossible for a novice to get his hands on this corporate tool.
However, freely available war dialing tools can provide a wealth of information to hackers. Though much inefficient than the PhoneSweep, these tools can be used successfully with little patience and time. These tools can be used discover the holes in devices attached to unprotected modems. Through these reconnaissance attacks, the type of system at the other end can be easily discovered. Latter an attacker can launch system specific attacks on there vulnerable devices and create backdoors to the entire network
Conclusion
It has been a blessing to the corporate security offices that a tool like PhoneSweep is at their disposal. Previously they had to rely on other freeware which had greater chances of introducing viruses or threats into the system. Some of these were even used to report back to the designer about the holes in a corporate network. However Sandstorm has made it impossible for the hackers to get their hand on this ethical software. Though it comes at a huge cost, any corporate wishing to keep their system free from undiscovered threats associated with phone lines should have PhoneSweep as part of their security mechanism.
References:
Sandstorm.net
Sans.com
Wikipedia
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