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Green homes bring satisfaction, energy savings
Green homes can generate owner satisfaction, cut long-term costs
When Cathy Lawton started selling homes in Fairfield County in 1985, green house equated more to plants growing in a glass structure than an energy-efficient dwelling.
But now, homebuyers want to limit their household expenses and are increasingly demanding the home they purchase features technology such as solar panels, geothermal energy and energy-efficient windows and insulation.
Features like geothermal and photovoltaic solar arrays might add several thousand dollars to the price of a house, but that doesn't seem to faze many homebuyers who see the long-term value, according to Lawton, an agent with Kelly Associates Real Estate in Darien.
"Interest is increasing, and certainly it's a nice additional feature. Location is still a big concern, but style and `green' can go hand-in-hand. That's what buyers are realizing."
`Great investment'
Lawton recently represented Sam and Anthea Nickerson in the sale of their Darien home, which won a platinum rating from the U.S. Green Building Council -- the highest possible.
The Nickersons bought the house in 2006 and incorporated extensive energy improvements into an expansion of the 1920s-era building.
"We did a deep energy retrofit and were able to get LEED (leadership in energy and environmental design) certification," Sam Nickerson said. "Clearly, energy efficiency was a huge part of it. We doubled the size of the house and reduced energy expenditures by 80 percent. We thought it was a great investment."
The project involved installation of solar-array photovoltaic and solar-thermal panels, energy-efficient windows and insulation, energy-recovery ventilators, paints with nonvolatile compounds and environmentally friendly building materials.
"It was a yearlong project. It was a gut renovation, but it didn't take any longer than a normal renovation project," said Nickerson, who lives in Massachusetts with his family. The buyer was unavailable for comment.
`Over the top'
The reconstruction and expansion of the more than 3,000-square-foot house was designed by Elizabeth DiSalvo, principal architect in Trillium Architects in Ridgefield and a member of the Connecticut Green Building Council Board of Directors.
Interest has increased in building and buying energy-efficient homes, she said.
"There are people who want to save money and think it's cool, and there are others who just want the greenest home possible," said DiSalvo, who helped organize a tour of energy-efficient homes across the state hosted by the Connecticut Green Building Council during two weekends last month.
They ranged from a house where completing energy retrofits was done by the owner, according to DiSalvo, to new homes that are "over the top" in energy efficiency.
Among the homes on the tour were several in Fairfield County.
"Right before the recession in 2008, people started asking for it (energy-efficient homes), and then the recession threw it off," DiSalvo said. "As soon as the recession ended, people were totally into it."
Resale value
There is a different philosophy among the professionals who design and build energy-efficient homes, compared with those who construct homes using more conventional strategies, she said.
"We try to assess the resale value with clients," DiSalvo said, adding the Connecticut Green Building Council wants to educate real estate agents about the benefits of energy-efficient properties and the technology involved.
"Our council is starting to green the MLS (Multiple Listing Service)," she said. "The MLS is starting to recognize energy efficiency. Every house we do has solar panels and a version of geothermal."
Some level of green is being incorporated in most home construction, according to Katherine Pancak, professor of finance and real estate at the University of Connecticut.
"There is a growing interest in homebuyers that want to buy a green home," she said. "Reasons vary, including wanting an home that is healthier, has lower utility and maintenance costs, and leaves less of a carbon footprint on the environment. While the perception is green homes are expensive to build, the U.S. Green Building Council reports energy-efficient green homes can be built for the same cost or less than conventional homes. The USGBC reports just under 50 percent of new construction homes they certify are in the affordable housing sector, indicating green technology is being incorporated at all housing levels."


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Author - Yatendra Singh
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posted on 30 July 2018
July 2018 Texas Manufacturing Survey Improves
Of the five Federal Reserve districts which have released their July manufacturing surveys - all were in expansion. A complete summary follows.
Analyst Opinion of Dallas Fed Manufacturing Survey
This survey remains in positive territory with new orders improving and unfilled orders significantly improving - and both in positive territory. Even though this survey declined, our opinion is that this was a stronger report than last month.
The expectations from Nasdaq / Econoday was 29.0 to 38.5 (consensus 32.0), and the reported value was 29.4. From the Dallas Fed:
Source: Dallas Fed
Summary of all Federal Reserve Districts Manufacturing:
Richmond Fed (hyperlink to reports):
z richmond_man.PNG
Kansas Fed (hyperlink to reports):
z kansas_man.PNG
Dallas Fed (hyperlink to reports):
z dallas_man.PNG
Philly Fed (hyperlink to reports):
z philly fed1.PNG
New York Fed (hyperlink to reports):
z empire1.PNG
Federal Reserve Industrial Production - Actual Data (hyperlink to report):
Holding this and other survey's Econintersect follows accountable for their predictions, the following graph compares the hard data from Industrial Products manufacturing subindex (dark blue bar) and US Census manufacturing shipments (lighter blue bar) to the Dallas Fed survey (light blue bar).
Comparing Surveys to Hard Data:
z survey1.png
In the above graphic, hard data is the long bars, and surveys are the short bars. The arrows on the left side are the key to growth or contraction.
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If you are a sentient being, you may have heard that California has been running budget deficits for most of the past decade. You also may have heard that the state faces a big deficit that Gov. Jerry Brown is desperately trying to close.
So it's a bit strange, if not funny, that Gov. Brown's revised budget proposal includes a reserve of $1.2 billion. This is aspirational, of course, since right now the state hasn't grabbed the revenues or made the cuts to balance the budget. It's almost certainly not real, any more than the small reserves that appeared year after year in Gov. Schwarzenegger's budget proposal.
So why bother with a reserve? The answer is always that a reserve is prudent, in case some budget estimates are overly optimistic. And it's a good goal, like a fat man setting a goal of what weight he wants to be. Of course, a reserve of that size, less than 2 percent of a general fund of roughly $90 billion isn't all that worthwhile. A real reserve would have real cash in it -- and would approach 15 percent of the size of the overall budget. But California, facing deficits (and accumulated debt), can't get there under its current budget system. Which is why it might be wiser to stop pretending and ditch the fictional budget reserve.


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VoIP security testing fundamentals
Testing your VoIP security system against all the threats that exist on the network can be a full time job. This guide documents how a VoIP system can be tested and suggest some of the available tools to use -- with a focus on fuzzing tools and methods.
Table of contents
Continue Reading This Article
Enjoy this article as well as all of our content, including E-Guides, news, tips and more.
- Can VoIP security be tested using fuzzing?
-- VoIP security has become more of an issue as its popularity increases -- testing the VoIP network with fuzzing tools can help ensure that its security.
- Are there free fuzzing tools to test VoIP security?
-- Fuzzing is a form of stress testing that uses malformed packets to test the VoIP network's ability to withstand attacks.
- Can VoIP security be tested by attacking the system?
-- This section discusses tools that can be used to test the security of a VoIP network.
- How can fuzzing be used to deter VoIP protocol attacks?
-- Fuzzing, or functional protocol testing, can be used to help ensure a VoIP network's security. This settion also discusses some of the different tools available.
Can VoIP security be tested using fuzzing?
Voice over IP security is a popular topic lately, and there is good reason for concern. VoIP is becoming more and more popular and the more widely used it becomes, the more of a target it will be to those interested in wrongdoing.
There are many attack vectors when it comes to VoIP. It relies on the IP infrastructure so any attack that targets a network can be a potential hazard for VoIP. There is concern regarding VoIP components like the OS a soft-phone is running on or the firmware of a device. There are configuration concerns like devices with exposed TCP and UDP ports. There are the aforementioned IP infrastructure attacks in the form of DoS attacks or SYN flooding. Eventually, no matter what the specific attack, there is a good chance that the attacker is exploiting a weakness in the VoIP protocol that is being used.
The two most popular protocols are SIP and H.323. Each of these has their pluses and minuses in terms of security and overall effectiveness.
First let's take a look at SIP. SIP is easier to use since it uses textual encoding like HTTP. It's extensible and it can be paired with other protocols. As far as security goes, textual coding makes debugging easier, but it also makes spoofing easier. Since it is a relatively simple protocol, there is less chance of coding errors. Its open nature does create some concern, as easily integrated and extensible protocols can have more implementation errors.
What about H.323? H.323 uses a binary encoding, which makes it difficult to debug and subject to buffer overflow attacks. Its complexity can also lead to implementation errors. It is not very extensible which actually helps the security-wise and it has a monolithic architecture, which means it does not need to borrow functionality from other protocols.
As you can see, each protocol has its pros and cons. Regardless of the protocol your VoIP implementation is using there are some ways you can test the security of these protocols.
One way to test your implementation protocols is with fuzzing. Fuzzing, or functional protocol testing, is a good way to find bugs and vulnerabilities. Fuzzing works by creating different packets for a given protocol and injecting the packets with data that will test the limits of the protocol. The packets are sent to a device, app or OS and the results are observed.
The PROTOS group at the University of Oulu in Finland is responsible for identifying a number of protocol weaknesses. They've published papers that describe methods for testing SIP and H.323.
The more widespread VoIP becomes the more it will come under attack. By taking some initiative now and testing your VoIP implementation, you might be able to prevent a failure in the future.
Are there free fuzzing tools to test VoIP security?
Fuzzing is a form of stress testing using malformed packets. Fuzzing is also known as functional protocol testing or robustness testing. It is usually used to automate vulnerability discovery. It finds bugs and vulnerabilities by producing different packet types that target a protocol. The fuzzing attack pushes the protocol's design specifications to the breaking point. It is often used by developers and vendor internal QA groups to test their protocol implementations.
It is dangerous to assume that the protocol implementations produced by a vendor are all identical. The protocol software can vary by software release and version. Chapter 11 of "Hacking VoIP Exposed," www.hackingvoip.com, provides a more in-depth discussion of the technique.
The electrical engineering department at Finland's University of Oulu has been working on VoIP security issues and has a good site to access. This site deals with specific signaling protocol attacks. Another resource is a long presentation by Hendrik Scholz, "SIP Stack Fingerprinting and Stack Difference Attacks," which was given at the 2006 Black Hat conference. This security conference now has a separate track discussing VoIP security.
Any tools that attack an enterprise's security will of course cause damage to the operation of VoIP if they are used improperly. The links listed below usually have instructions covering the proper use of the tool, but even following the instructions may not eliminate damage.
This list contains free and commercial tools. There are many other free and commercial tools that are used by developers that can also be used to attack VoIP components. This tool list is not exhaustive; other free and commercial tools are available. The primary source for the tool list is www.voipsa.org from the VoIP Security Alliance. The tools in this tip deal only with fuzzing attacks.
Can VoIP security be tested by attacking the system?
This tip covers tools that can be used to create packet flooding and signaling manipulation.
Packet flooding can cause various forms of Denial of Service (DoS) -- the endpoints don't work, the network is overloaded, phones are disconnected and other malicious acts occur. Signaling manipulation can cause calls to be directed to other locations, add a second listener to the call, create a rogue call manager and force phones to reboot. Another good presentation on VoIP attacks is VoIP Attacks! by Dustin Trammell presented at ToorCon 2006.
How to use this information (disclaimer)
Any tools that attack an enterprise's security will probably cause damage to the operation of VoIP if the tools are used improperly. The links listed below usually have instructions covering the proper use of the tool. Even following the instructions may not eliminate damage or harm. The links are to other sites and are not part of TechTarget, so there is no guarantee that everything will work as expected. The links are for information purposes only.
Now that the disclaimer is out of the way, this list contains free tools. There are many other free and commercial tools on the market that are used by developers that also can be used to attack VoIP components. This tool list is not exhaustive. The primary source for the tool list is VoIPSA from the VoIP Security Alliance. Several of these tools were developed by David Endler and Mark Collier, the authors of Hacking VoIP Exposed.
There are also scanning, enumeration and miscellaneous tools as well as commercial development tools that are available. As VoIP becomes more pervasive and the number of individuals using VoIP increases, so will the attack tools. Keep checking the sites mentioned in these tips for further additions to the attack tools list.
How can fuzzing be used to deter VoIP protocol attacks?
reprinted from SearchSecurity.com
Researchers at the University of Oulu discovered many of the known SIP and H.323 vulnerabilities using functional test methods to assess protocol implementation security. Functional protocol testing, also known as "black-box testing" or "fuzzing," sends many diverse input messages to a vendor's implementation, exercising error handling routines and generating conditions never anticipated by the protocol designers or software developers. Fuzzers systematically send test messages, randomly or sequentially, within the framework defined by a given protocol specification. The implementation undergoing testing is observed for buffer overflows, unhandled exceptions and unexpected behavior.
To demonstrate the effectiveness of this methodology, the University of Oulu's PROTOS project developed functional test suites for several Internet protocols, including HTTP, LDAP, SNMP, SIP and H.225. The PROTOS Test-Suite: c07-sip exercises SIP proxy and user agent INVITE handling, using more than 4,500 test messages. The PROTOS Test-Suite: c07-h2250v4 tests devices that handle H.225.0/Q.931 Setup-PDU messages, including H.323 endpoint terminals and gateways, VoIP-aware firewalls and multi-point control units.
When these test suites ran against several representative SIP and H.323 implementations, product failure rates were alarming. Fortunately, many of these vendors used test results to correct identified vulnerabilities. Test case definitions and Java code for sending these test messages are available for downloading on the PROTOS project Web site, at no charge.
The PROTOS SIP and H.323 test suites clearly demonstrated the value of functional protocol testing, but they only scratched the surface of each protocol. Further testing of other VoIP protocol messages may uncover more vulnerabilities. Nonetheless, enterprises rolling out VoIP would be wise to take one of these PROTOS suites out for a test drive. Running functional tests against VoIP products under consideration or already installed in your company's network can identify vulnerabilities before attackers compromise them. The following are some key tactics for successfully testing products:
- Test all devices that send, receive or parse VoIP protocols, including handsets, softphones, SIP proxies, H.323 gateways, call managers and firewalls that VoIP messages pass through. Exercise care because some tests may result in DoS.
- When vulnerabilities are found, search CVE databases and apply any related patches, or report test results for unpatched problems to your vendor for remediation.
- Re-run tests to verify that applied patches have fixed identified vulnerabilities and have not created new vulnerabilities. Also re-run tests after installing software/firmware updates to VoIP products.
- Companies that already have a network security audit process may want to add VoIP functional tests to the list of penetration tests run during each audit.
- Enterprises with significant investment in (and dependence on) VoIP may want to create more extensive functional protocol test cases, using PROTOS test suites as a guide.