Top VoIP Vulnerabilities In 2022- Secure VoIP
In the first step of the development, VoIP vulnerabilities were addressed, and VoIP security concerns were not huge in the initial phases of the technology’s development. Its main issues were its price, efficiency, and stability. Security issues have become a significant concern as VoIP gets popular over time.
When we consider that VoIP is replacing POTS, the oldest and most secure communication system the world has ever known, the security dangers are much more concerning (Plain Old Telephone System). Let’s examine the dangers VoIP users encounter.
1. Service and Identity Theft
A form of hacking called phreaking involves stealing services from service providers or using services while shifting the expense to a third party. SIP, which manages communications, rarely uses encryption.
VoIP call authentication makes user credentials susceptible to fraud.
Most hackers use eavesdropping to obtain passwords and other information. A third party can control voicemail, calling plans, call forwarding, and billing information by listening in on conversations and obtaining names, passwords, and phone numbers. As a result, services are stolen.
Identity theft is not just committed to making calls without paying. Thieves do it to obtain important information, such as corporate data.
Phreaks have the ability to alter calling plans and packages, add more credit, and place calls on the victim’s behalf. Additionally, they have access to private information like voicemail and can alter call forwarding numbers for themselves.
2. Vishing - VoIP vulnerabilities
Vishing is another name for VoIP phishing, which is when someone calls you pretending to be from a reliable company (like your bank) and asks for private and frequently crucial information.
3. Malware and Viruses
Like any Internet application, VoIP use incorporating softphones and software is susceptible to worms, viruses, and malware. Softphone applications are vulnerable to malicious code assaults in voice applications when running on user platforms like PCs and PDAs.
4. DoS (Denial of Service) - VoIP vulnerabilities
An attempt to deprive a network or device of connectivity or service is known as a DoS attack. Attackers use up bandwidth or overtax the device’s internal resources or the network.
DoS attacks in VoIP overwhelm a target with pointless SIP call-signaling messages, lowering the quality of the service. Due to this, calls are interrupted, prematurely dropped, and halted during the call.
Why would anybody carry out a DoS assault? The attacker can take remote control of the system’s administrative tools once the service stops functioning.
5. SPIT (Spamming over Internet Telephony)
If you frequently use email, you must be familiar with spam. Spamming is the practice of sending emails to recipients without their will. These emails are mainly cold calls for internet sales. With VoIP’s growth as an industrial tool, spamming in VoIP is on the rise.
An IP address is linked to each VoIP account. Spammers can easily transmit their voicemails to thousands of different IP addresses. As a result, voice mailing will degrade. Spam jams voicemails, necessitating both greater storage and better voicemail management solutions.
Additionally, spam mail has been known to include spyware and viruses.
This brings up phishing over VoIP, another variation of SPIT. Phishing attacks involve giving someone a voicemail that pretends to be from a source them trust, like a bank or an online payment service, to make them believe they are safe. Typically, the voicemail requests private information like passwords or credit card numbers. The rest is easy to envision!
6. Call Tampering - VoIP vulnerabilities
An assault is known as “call tampering” and involves interfering with an active phone call. The attacker could, for instance, introduce noise packets into the communication stream to degrade the call’s quality. Additionally, he can delay packet delivery to keep the connection.
Additionally, he has the ability to delay packet delivery, resulting in sporadic contact and extended pauses for the callers.
7. Attacks by a Man-in-the-Middle
Man-in-the-middle attacks, in which the attacker intercepts call-signaling SIP message traffic and poses as the calling party to the called party or vice versa, are particularly dangerous to VoIP systems. Once in this position, the attacker can hijack calls using a redirection server.
How VoIP networks are insecure, open to attack, and prone to devastating failure? The new book Securing VoIP Networks by Peter Thermos and Ari Takanen examines VoIP infrastructure and evaluates its vulnerabilities, like that of the Common Weakness Enumeration dictionary for software and the Open Web Application Security Project for web-related vulnerabilities. And it’s not just about technological issues; it’s also about human shortcomings.
VoIP Vulnerabilities Flaws
The following are the most significant VoIP flaws as described in Securing VoIP Networks:
1: Execution flaws - VoIP vulnerabilities
The foundation of VoIP services and registrations is often made up of standard databases. Implementation must be vigilant in separating user-provided data such as SQL queries from active content. As well as Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) URLs, user names, and passwords. Insecure programming techniques and poor input filtering are the main causes of execution defect issues.
2: String/array/pointer Manipulation bugs
Any protocol message, including SIP, H.323, SDP, MGCP, RTP, and SRTP, can contain corrupted packets with unexpected structures and content. Buffer-overflow attacks and other boundary-value situations are among the most prevalent malformed message conditions. As a result, the attacker’s input is copied over other internal memory data, including registers and pointers, enabling the attacker to seize control of the vulnerable process completely.
3: Web security Threats - VoIP vulnerabilities
Most Web programs can be hacked, according to experts. Here are the top ten flaws that could compromise your website.
● Site-to-site scripting
● Faults in injection
● Ransom ware file execution
● Direct object reference that is not secure
● Counterfeit cross-site requests
● Poor management of errors and information leaks
● Broken session management and authentication
● Insecure cryptographic archiving
● Unreliable communications
● Access to URLs is not limited.
4: Limited Resources - VoIP vulnerabilities
VoIP solutions may have limited access to resources, particularly in embedded systems. An attacker may easily disable VoIP services on embedded devices due to low memory and processing capacity.
5: Limited bandwidth - VoIP vulnerabilities
The service must be designed to handle the load even if every caller places a call at the same time. This is not a major issue when there are few VoIP service consumers. However, if a service is deliberately loaded with thousands of bot clients, or when an incident results in a significant load from legitimate customers, the entire service may be shut down.
6: File/resource Manipulation flaws
These are common implementation faults and programming blunders brought on by the use of insecure programming constructs, and they cause security issues. Unsecure file access is one of these issues.
7: Password Management
A VoIP user’s only means of identification is either their phone number or SIP URL, together with a potential password for the service. The client and server both have password storage. Anyone with access to the server (or proxy or registrar) can obtain the username and password combinations if passwords are stored in a format that can be reversed.
8: Privileges and approvals - VoIP vulnerabilities
Resources must be protected both from the operating system and platform standpoint and from the network side. VoIP services using the platform must take into account the rights they have access to. VoIP services don’t always need to be run with administrative or “root” privileges.
9: Cryptography and Randomness
Confidential information in VoIP signaling needs to be shielded against hacker attacks. Even when the necessary encryption techniques are present, the most frequent vulnerability in this category is the failure to encrypt anything at all.
10: Authentication and Certificate Errors
It’s important to authenticate users and devices. Additionally, VoIP devices offer additional features like device management that demand user identification. SIP has a bug called “registration hijack,” where the registrar system fails to authenticate user and device
It allows attackers to spoof registration messages and re-register as valid users.
11: Error Handling - VoIP vulnerabilities
An example of error handling in SIP implementations is how improper registration is handled. A “404” error code may appear in a register message with an invalid phone number, while a “401” error would appear with a legitimate phone number. It will enable the attacker to focus their attack and attempt a brute-force attack exclusively on active accounts or to gather active accounts for Spam over Internet Telephony (SPIT).
12: Homogeneous Network
Large reliance on a small number of vendor brands and device variants poses an unexpected vulnerability in many network infrastructures. If every device in a network is reliant on a single brand of phone, proxy, or firewall,
The entire network can be prevented from functioning by a single automated attack like a virus or worm.
13: There is no fallback system in place
Users must have access to backup systems in case the VoIP network goes down, as it inevitably will. Infrastructure planning is necessary for this.
14: Physical Connection Quality and packet Collision
VoIP is generally not for you if your data infrastructure experiences packet loss. Network jitter and latency should be at a minimum. VoIP will instantly show any communication bottlenecks, even if they weren’t immediately visible with conventional data transfers.
Author
Zayne Z
Meet Zayne VoIP Blog's dedicated Content Researcher with 5+ Years Experience. Passionate about VoIP technology, he delivers accurate, engaging articles, keeping readers informed on industry trends with excellence.