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Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is growing more ubiquitous and consequently, more networks are increasingly being connected to public networks, allowing organizations as well as organisations to reduce their conventional calls therefore bring down costs and greatly improve efficiency. Various expert project different expansion rates for the VoIP market yet all of them concur that VoIP implementations are thriving rapidly and are anticipated to increase further.

Presently there are reported more security bugs linked to VoIP this year alone than in whole years before 2004 combined. VoIP are liable to security attacks particularly those linked to denial-of-service (DoS) attacks and hacked VOIP gateways will lead to illegitimate free calls or call eavesdropping. Security measures are of paramount importance when creating VoIP system mainly because each component in the infrastructure is accessible on the network just like any computer and can be hacked or exploited as a launch pad for broader, inter-network or within the network attacks. A gateway that has been broken into could be exploited to make unauthorized free phone calls

VoIP System and securitybasic  solutions

VoIP Security experts encourage varied protocols since they have a number of advantages, yet when it comes to VOIP system, there are several circumstances which are common to most VoIP protocols. Utilising the most effective security system will eliminate further risk issues and attacks.

Each VoIP infrastructure system is accessible over the data network like any other computer. Each VoIP element consists a processor running software along with a TCP/IP stack that can be attacked. Intrusions on data communications usually takes place by means of IP voice infrastructure and vice versa. DoS attacks targeting weak VoIP elements can overwhelm the network with bogus voice traffic, taking down network performance or knock down both voice and data communications. Susceptible voice communications could be bugged and compromised or corrupted, PC-based soft phones, telephones that use software to convert a desktop PC into an IP-based phone, are susceptible to eavesdropping if the PC is infected with a Trojan that snoops into a Local Area Network.

Here are highly recommended VoIP Security measures to eliminate those above-mentioned threats:

1. Switch off unnecessary protocols that can be exploited by hackers or inside-the-organization intruders
2. Thoroughly pick the Voice over internet protocol equipment that best meet your requirement.
3. Update the software operating the VOIP system on a regular basis.
4. Use Network Address Translation (NAT) that acts to turn internal static IP addresses into a single IP address.
5. Separate VoIP and other IP-based using logical as well as physical separators
6. Allow only authorized personell to conduct VOIP supervision and upgrade

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Privoxy is a free network utility software best known for its advanced filtering capabilities for enhancing privacy, modifying web page data and HTTP headers, controlling access, and removing ads and other Internet junk. This light weight  free software can also  be used to create a simple-yet-powerful proxy server in Windows to share internet connections over private , home or small   Local Area Network, a hidden  feature many are not familiar with. Furthermore, the best thing about sharing internet connection using Privoxy is that you can share internet connection with other  client computers running different operating systems such as Linux, Macintosh  etc.

Supposed you have a computer running Windows  and is connected to the internet and you want the rest computers  running different operating systems  within Local Area Network to share the internet connection.
In this posting it is assumed  the assigned IP address of computer you want to make as proxy server is 10.1.14.25 and you want client computers to connect to it through port 8080 . Also supposed that you have 5  client computers with the following IP  range  10.1.14.0- 10.1.14.024.  You can  find out your  actual IP  address settings by going to Network Settings.

In Windows Go To Start —>Settings—>Network Settings—>right click on Local Area Network—->Networking–>Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)

Here is a step-by step guide to share your connections with Privoxy

Step One : Enable Windows  IP forwarding

You need to first enable Windows IP forwarding feature on the Windows-run  computer that you want to make as proxy server by modifying or a creating registry key
Click  Start—>Run —>Regedit
Locate the following key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Services \ Tcpip \
Create a registry key or a or modify its value if it’s already there (see picture bellow)
Value Name: IPEnableRouter
Value type: REG_DWORD
Value Data: 1

Step Two  : Download and install Privoxy

You may obtain Privoxy here

/download . Click on the installer and follow the wizard  to install it on the server

Step Three-, Edit  Privoxy configurations/settings

It’s recommended that you  back up the original Privoxy configuration just in case you need to restore it to its  default settings by saving it with another name.  Go to  Options Menu – Edit Main Configuration and delete its entire content and replace with the following command lines:

user-manual /Program Files/Privoxy/doc/user-manualadmin-address [fill in with your email  address]
confdir .
logdir .
debug 1
logfile privoxy.log # log file name
log-messages   1
listen-address  10.1.14.25:8080 #Server IP address and port
permit-access 10.1.14.0/5 # network ip range allowed to use the proxy
toggle  0
enable-remote-toggle  0
enable-remote-http-toggle  0
enable-edit-actions 0
enforce-blocks 1
buffer-limit 4096
forwarded-connect-retries  20
accept-intercepted-requests 1
allow-cgi-request-crunching 0
split-large-forms 0
keep-alive-timeout 300
socket-timeout 300
activity-animation   1
log-max-lines 2000
log-highlight-messages 1
log-font-name Comic Sans MS
log-font-size 10

Save and close the new configuration file then go to  Privoxy  Options Menu  and enable the newly-created configuration.

Step Four:  Configure internet browser on client computers

Configure internet browser to use the proxy server address and port (in this case we use the following proxy and port Proxy : 10.1.14.25 Port : 8080
Done ..

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