I'm here in Ft. Lauderdale, and I'm taking a bit of a break from the set-up to draw some attention to a recent post on Mark Collier's VoIP Security Blog.
Mark Collier knows a thing or two about security. As CTO of SecureLogix Corporation, an enterprise telephony management and security company, Collier is responsible for technology research, development, and related intellectual property, including a special focus on VoIP security solutions. Mr. Collier is also a founding member of the VoIP Security Alliance (www.voipsa.com), an industry group focused on VoIP security education.
Back to the point, Collier has posted a series of predictions regarding VoIP security on his blog.
According to Collier, “Enterprise VoIP deployments will continue to ramp in 2007, and the frequency and severity of VoIP-specific attacks will increase as well.” He also believes that Denial of Service (DoS) will continue to be the most significant threat to VoIP.
Here are the Top 10 predictions, according to Collier:
1) There is no doubt that VoIP security attacks have taken place, but very few have been widely publicized. I predict that in 2007, we will see enterprise VoIP systems attacked and the results publicized.
2) VoIP is an application running on the data network and will continue to be affected by attacks such as worms, virus, Denial of Service (DoS), etc. While these attacks may not directly target VoIP systems, they will disrupt operations because the underlying platforms are vulnerable to the attack.
3) We will also start to see more VoIP specific attacks, particularly aimed at the enterprise. There is more scrutiny of VoIP systems and attackers will find more issues that are unique to VoIP and the systems that enable it.
4) Attackers will also be developing more tools to exploit these issues. Even now, there are plenty of tools out there, but you can expect to see more tools and extensions to the tools currently available.
5) Denial of Service (DoS) will continue to be the most significant threat to VoIP systems. Many VoIP systems are very vulnerable to fuzzing and flood based attacks, including simple transport and application layer attacks.
6) You can expect enterprises to start deploying the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) for handsets as well as connectivity to the public network. The move to SIP will affect security, because there is a long list of SIP attack tools available for use.
7) Even with the move to SIP, proprietary protocols will continue to dominate VoIP for several years. You will start to see new attack tools that target these protocols as well, especially for vendors with wide deployment (Cisco, Avaya, Nortel, Siemens, etc.).
8) Social threats such as voice phishing and voice SPAM will start to emerge. They will not be common, but their threat level will grow with the increasing adoption of VoIP. Social engineering attacks could start to become disruptive in late 2007.
9) Although vendors will increase their offerings for conversation encryption, it will not be widely employed by enterprises.
10) VoIP deployment has the potential to affect traditional networks. Attacks like DoS, SPIT, and toll fraud may “spill” over and affect legacy systems.”
VoIP Security will be on display at Internet Telephony Conference & EXPO this week as well. The conference features a dedicated full-day track on the subject of VoIP Security, and will feature sessions entitled, “Everything You wanted to Know About VoIP Security,” “VoIP Spamming — Challenges and Soutions,” and SIP & Security. The sessions will take place on Friday January 26, at the Broward County Convention Center in Ft. Lauderdale.
Speakers will include representatives from the following companies:
- NEC Unified Solutions
- Alcatel-Lucent
- Aculab
- Stonesoft
- Eyeball Networks
- XConnect
- Ingate Systems, and others
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So how did the telephony conference go?
I wonder how the security issues will affect the time it takes for VoIP to become a major source of telephone service. The benefits of VoIP are great, but these security issues must be fixed before it's deemed viable, unless VoIP providers just roll out service and worry about security threats when they happen, which I hope doesn't happen..
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Wow thats a lot of security issues to think about. I think VOIP will still become more popular just bc the technology will become better. More businesses will capitalize on it. http://ispsurvey.com