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Security Professionals Outline the Risks of VoIP Hacking
2007-08-06
In the beginning, the main issues with VoIP were reliability, functionality and cost. But now that VoIP seems to be on the way to replacing the traditional telephone system, it has become more enticing to criminals—and the security threat has become a cause for concern.
Security threats in VoIP can take several forms. There is the most common: identity and service theft. Encryption is not yet common inSIP , and that can open up user credentials to theft. There are viruses and malware, which can infiltrate VoIP just like any other Internet application. A Denial of Service (DoS) attack involves overloading networks and consuming bandwidth so that users lose connectivity. Spam will also become an issue as the technology grows more mainstream, clogging voicemail and requiring better management tools. Hackers can even tamper with a call in progress.
“VoIP is about convergence. The idea is that you save money and resources and time,” said one of the Black Hat presenters, Next Generation Security Software’s senior security consultant Barrie Dempster. “But convergent systems give you more avenues of attack, more ways in. It’s not a secure environment.”
Businesses are being increasingly hit by VoIP attacks, including several companies in the past year that suffered from “toll fraud”, a scheme in which hackers sell thousands of dollars worth of long-distance minutes by hacking into a company’s VoIP network.
By Brian Solomon
As VoIP gains nationwide acceptance and becomes a mainstream communications technology, security and the risks of hacking are also becoming major issues. That’s the point that security professionals at the Black Hat convention in Las Vegas were trying to drive home earlier this week, even going so far as to demonstrate onstage how VoIP services can be hacked by criminals.
In the beginning, the main issues with VoIP were reliability, functionality and cost. But now that VoIP seems to be on the way to replacing the traditional telephone system, it has become more enticing to criminals—and the security threat has become a cause for concern.
Security threats in VoIP can take several forms. There is the most common: identity and service theft. Encryption is not yet common inSIP , and that can open up user credentials to theft. There are viruses and malware, which can infiltrate VoIP just like any other Internet application. A Denial of Service (DoS) attack involves overloading networks and consuming bandwidth so that users lose connectivity. Spam will also become an issue as the technology grows more mainstream, clogging voicemail and requiring better management tools. Hackers can even tamper with a call in progress.
“VoIP is about convergence. The idea is that you save money and resources and time,” said one of the Black Hat presenters, Next Generation Security Software’s senior security consultant Barrie Dempster. “But convergent systems give you more avenues of attack, more ways in. It’s not a secure environment.”
Businesses are being increasingly hit by VoIP attacks, including several companies in the past year that suffered from “toll fraud”, a scheme in which hackers sell thousands of dollars worth of long-distance minutes by hacking into a company’s VoIP network.
By Brian Solomon
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