Along with cell phone worms, VoIP fraud is among the top 10 security threats to watch next year, according to a panel of experts assembled by the SANS Institute. The report predicts that this will because hackers have begun penetrating VoIP servers and selling dial tone as if they were a phone company.
"The hackers collect the money from the people that use it, while the company operating the servers gets the bill,” said SANS Director of Research, Alan Paller. The fact that calls can be hijacked without either party's knowledge anywhere along the route over the net that connects the call also makes things easier.
This vulnerability and other security holes will be exploited as soon as VoIP becomes the norm. We know that VoIP is being marketed aggressively - especially to medium-sized companies who are only looking at the cost benefits and end up not doing much about security. The more it expands the more hackers turn their attention to VoIP - now that's only logical don't you think?
While VoIP is growing and soon replacing traditional phone systems around the world but the way systems are being setup and managed also need to be examined. VoIP vendors argue that these security flaws are hard to exploit but you can find more than 20 freely available tools specific to attacking VoIP, according to this Wired News article.
In addition to cell phone viruses and VoIP attacks, other trends SANS predicts for 2007 in the Technewsworld article include the following:
Targeted attacks will be more prevalent, in particular on government agencies. Spyware will continue to be a huge and growing issue. Zero-day vulnerabilities will result in major outbreaks resulting in many thousands of PCs being infected worldwide. The majority of bots will be bundled with rootkits and Network Access Control will become common and will grow in sophistication to name a few.
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