Sipera VIPER Lab today revealed its Top 5 VoIP Threat Predictions for 2008. As with its "Top 5 VoIP Vulnerabilities in 2007" list, the Sipera VIPER team leveraged its own extensive research and examined reports to determine the VoIP/UC threats with the greatest potential impact in 2008.



Based on industry trends that include major IP telephony vendors offering SIP solutions, enterprises deploying VoIP and unified communications (UC) beyond the traditionally secure perimeter, and service providers aggressively embracing fixed mobile convergence (FMC), Sipera VIPER Lab's Top 5 VoIP Threat Predictions for 2008 are:

1) First and foremost, as enterprises deploy SIP Trunks and UC for the mobile workspace, denial of service (DoS) and distributed DoS attacks on VoIP networks will become an increasingly important issue.

2) HTTP or other third party data services running on VoIP end-points will be exploited for eavesdropping and other attacks.

3) The hacking community, experienced with exploiting the vulnerabilities in other Microsoft offerings, will turn its attention and tools towards Microsoft OCS - taking advantage of its UC connections to public IMs, email addresses and buddy lists to create botnets and launch attacks. As well, enterprise federation for OCS, a major productivity and business process enabler, will be a source of greater VoIP security risk since it exposes once closed networks to the risks found in other federations.

4) Hackers will set up more IP PBXs for vishing/phishing exploits. Vishing bank accounts will accelerate, due to ease of exploit and the appeal of "easy money."

5) VoIP attacks against service providers will escalate, using readily available, anonymous $20 SIM cards. With UMA becoming more widely deployed, service providers are, for the first time, allowing subscribers to have direct access to mobile core networks over IP, making it easier to spoof identities and use illegal accounts to launch a variety of attacks.