UFB - GPON and Security

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MattHNZ

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#111056 23-Oct-2012 08:13

Hi All,

This is about my 3rd post in the history of GeekZone.... so go easy on me :-)

I've been looking at the detail behind the Fibre / UFB solution that Chorus have started rolling out.

So this stuff is using GPON (Gigabit Passive Optical Network), right?

Correct me if i'm wrong: but from what I have read it's possible that up to 32 houses may be sharing the same SFP or connected to the same fibre node.

Does anyone know what measures are in place to stop a person from connecting directly to the fibre in their home and sniffing the traffic that the other 31 people in the neighbourhood are receiving?

Ok so it's not the end of the world we're only talking about home users here.. but whats to stop me from listening in on my neighbours VOIP conversation? (Well, at least the downstream part)

Food for thought? or is there one key thing I'm missing here?

Cheers

Matt

sbiddle

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#704893 23-Oct-2012 08:28

GPON supports AES security for the downstream, with 128bit being fairly common in GPON deployments.

freitasm

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#704895 23-Oct-2012 08:47

MattHNZ: Ok so it's not the end of the world we're only talking about home users here.. but whats to stop me from listening in on my neighbours VOIP conversation? (Well, at least the downstream part)

Not "talking about home users" only. We are talking real money (Internet banking, online credit card usage, online bet, accounting software, etc). We are talking about people running businesses from home, or people working from home.

Security is a real concern, regardless if it's a business or a home connection.

But as sbiddle said above, encryption is a common thing in deployments.

You should worry more about using free, open, unencrypted WiFi around town.

MattHNZ

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#704900 23-Oct-2012 09:04

Thanks for your replies guys.

Is anyone able to confirm that we are running encryption here in NZ with the UFB roll out?

mercutio

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#704922 23-Oct-2012 09:41

MattHNZ: Thanks for your replies guys.

Is anyone able to confirm that we are running encryption here in NZ with the UFB roll out?

regardless of any encryption on the gpon link, you're more likely to have the US or NZ governments tapping your connection and rerouting traffic after it gets off the gpon link, and you'd be better off using encryption to your end point of any data.

Zeon

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#704958 23-Oct-2012 10:41

The prism should stop you from receiving the downstream traffic from other customers I would have thought. Upstream is shared but encrypted. At the end of the day copper is far less secure and easier to tap.

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