The Communications Research Network (CRN), an organization of industry experts and academics funded by a joint venture between Cambridge University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, believes that VoIP applications could provide excellent cover for launching denial of service (DoS) attacks because VoIP runs continuous media over IP packets.

The ability to dial in and out of VoIP overlays allows for control of an application via a voice network, making it almost impossible to trace the source of an attack, the research body claims. In addition, proprietary protocols, used by a number of VoIP applications, inhibit the ability of ISPs to track DoS activity, whilst encryption, peer to peer and a superpeer system to assist with call routing and NAT/Firewall traversal further obscure the traffic.

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