McAfee Labs Report on VoIP Vulnerabilities

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is a method for making phone calls over the Internet or using private networks. Traditional phone calls must travel over a series of switches and circuits owned by the telephone companies, which control the process and the charges. By using VoIP, both businesses and individuals can enjoy a substantial cost savings, especially while making long-distance calls.

McAfee Labs first observed an increase in VoIP vulnerabilities during the end of 2006 and that trend has continued through today. We can credit part of this increase to better tools for finding VoIP problems, yet this upward trend should be largely attributed to the growing number of VoIP installations.

The malicious behavior that we have seen in other media already plagues Internet voice calls. In this report, we examine vulnerability trends as well as protocol- and application-layer attacks. We offer both a general and technical overview to the threats against VoIP and how to protect and remediate against them.

Download the report, available in nine languages, in its entirety here. My compliments to colleague Kevin Watkins on this excellent piece of research!