Cisco Phones

[Dave]

Basically a friends workplace has had Cisco phones installed throughout. All very gucci, voice directories etc.

How easy is it for someone somewhere to monitor conversations etc? He works in a confidential environment.

 

[young_lew]

It wouldn't be simple if they have implemented all the right precautions like seperate I.p ranges, access lists and native vlans.

 

[Dave]

I'm not talking someone unauthorised to do so "hacking" in, I'm talking about someone who would have full authorisation from the employer to monitor conversations.

I assume it would be relatively easy?

 

[Magic Johnson]

Monitor as in realtime listening in? Or having all conversations recorded and going over them?

 

[Laura]

Easy peasy, we use cisco phones and all our calls are recorded

 

[Cookie]

It's not a standard feature, you have to pay extra for that sort of thing

Same goes for call logging in general

 

[Longy]

You can get many third party appliances that just sit between your ISDN lines and PBX that can record all calls going in and out, I've installed a few.

 

[young_lew]

Someone who's authorised may be able to capture packets then replay them at a later date with the right software.

I've never seen it done or done it myself but it's plausible.

 

[liamw]

Possible to capture and replay the packets in Wireshark or Observer network monitoring tools, done it myself at uni, its quite simple.

 

[DMS]

Capturing packets in Wireshark is not going to give away anything regarding the contents of the call. Your conversations aren't transmitted over the network as plain text you know.
That said, if the packets could be captured it must be possible to piece them back together somehow, even if it means replaying them across the wire to a target handset.

If it's a VOIP system they've had installed, they'll need something like Cisco VOIP Monitor Server or the one from NetIQ (forgot it's name). These are probably your best option.
Cisco Desktop Administrator can also record calls, should you wish to use that instead.

 

[The Hoff]

The very simple answer to your question is:

VERY EASILY.

The Mitel equipment we specced at work [also went to Cisco as they were also a front-runner, until we saw their horrible software] can monitor anyone with an ACD aware phone, but not Hot Desk/Teleworker handsets.

If you're not sure, assume your calls are logged and can be listened to.

 

[Cookie]

I know none of our calls are logged or monitored as we were too cheap to buy the extra bits

 

[Magic Johnson]

Same. :approve:

 

[Cliotoby]

Capturing packets in Wireshark is not going to give away anything regarding the contents of the call. Your conversations aren't transmitted over the network as plain text you know.
That said, if the packets could be captured it must be possible to piece them back together somehow, even if it means replaying them across the wire to a target handset.

If it's a VOIP system they've had installed, they'll need something like Cisco VOIP Monitor Server or the one from NetIQ (forgot it's name). These are probably your best option.
Cisco Desktop Administrator can also record calls, should you wish to use that instead.

Lol. imagine sifting through the sea of packets it holds !!

 

[Dave]

If you're not sure, assume your calls are logged and can be listened to.

Thank you.

 

[KungFuSpaghetti]

As above, it's piss easy and has varying levels of expense. A trunk side recording system would mean all your calls can be recorded on a per user license basis. Weather your phone has a license is another matter, but I'd not risk it. There's loads of different solutions to record though, we use Nortel hardware and the Nice trunkside system as well as IDVR TALC cards to monitor as well as realtime observe functions built into our CS1000

 

[iain187]

we have a calllogger pc

it's ancient and slow, doesn't log calls, just who you are ringing, when and how long for etc.

we always get managers ringing up going can you check ext **** for this day and tell me what calls were made lol

not cisco but similar stuff in our place.

 

[jaleach]

Basically a friends workplace has had Cisco phones installed throughout. All very gucci, voice directories etc.

How easy is it for someone somewhere to monitor conversations etc? He works in a confidential environment.

Quite an odd question to ask really.. and then tag on the end about the confidential environment.

As has been pointed out already - a VoIP can be monitored one of two ways - either through a SPAN port on the switch of one of the phones or through a dedicated monitoring system.

In VoIP the PBX (Call Manager for Cisco) is only there to tell the phones what to do and setup the call - the voice stream (RTP) goes directly from one phone to another. CallManager has no knowledge of the actual call-content, only the source/destination/ext.mobility etc.

If it's a 'confidential environment' then they would/should have implemented SRTP (secure RTP) which means the voice is encrypted between endpoints. As far as I'm aware, it's not possible to monitor SRTP as the encryption is negotiated only between the endpoints.

 

[KDF]

Having administered cisco phones a lot, the simple answer is very easily if it's an authorised person..

The phones have an inbuilt switch (to allow you to connect your computer to the phone) and it tags all voip frames onto their own vlan.

Forget all your packet capture jokers on here.. good luck with that.

 

[Dave]

Thank you.