Global VoIP security threats - large scale validation based on independent honeynets

Abstract

Voice over IP (VoIP) gains more and more attractiveness by large companies as well as private users. Therefore, the risk increases that VoIP systems get attacked by hackers. In order to effectively protect VoIP users from misuse, researchers use, e.g., honeynets to capture and analyze VoIP attacks occurring in the Internet. Global VoIP security threats are analyzed by studying several millions of real-world attacks collected in independent VoIP honeynet solutions with different capture mechanisms over a long period of time. Due to the validation of results from several honeynet designs we have achieved a unique, much broader view on large scale attacks. The results show similar attacker behavior, confirm previous assumptions about attacks and present new insights in large scale VoIP attacks, e.g., for toll fraud.