Defending Against Attacks On Internet-Based Telephone Services (Voice Over Ip)

Abstract

The telephone network is a critical platform for communication, used by all levels of society - government, the private sector and the general public. The shift to telephone services based on voice-over-IP technology holds the promise of significantly reducing costs for communication services. However, the Internet has long been plagued by a variety of network attacks. Reports of denial-of-service attacks, viruses and break-in attempts frequently appear in the world news. A major impediment to confidence in voice-over-IP services is the risk of attacks on its infrastructure, and the potential for using weaknesses in voice-over-IP infrastructure to launch attacks on the existing telephone net..