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> ***** Moderator's Note *****
>
> I worked in the Engineering group that was responsible for SS7 in New
> England. During the runup to Local Number Portability, when we were
> considering new vendors for SS7 devices, I expressed doubts about the
> software some of those vendors used: one vendor refused to allow
> examination of their software, while anohter depended on Off-the-shelf
> commercial software to handle their supervisory and management
> functions.
The Ars article misses the point. The real reason SS7 won't be fixed is because it can't. SS7 is relied upon by the PSTN legacy switches, mainly AT&T Technologies/WECo/Lucent (mostly they predate the Lucent years) 5ESS and Nortel DMS. Both companies are history. Theoretically Nokia and Ribbon (ex-Genband) own the product lines and sell mainte- nance, but no real upgrades can be done on them. They're being re- placed by newer products, which will mostly use SIP, not SS7. That's probably much less secure, but nobody cares, as they're blinded by IP magic pixie dust.