VoIP cyber attacks 'on the rise'

Cyber attacks using the VoIP protocol Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) are on the rise, accounting for more than 51 per cent of security ‘events’ monitored by IBM’s Security Intelligence Group over the past 12 months, it has been reported.

SIP is a communications protocol for signalling and controlling multimedia communication session such as voice and video calls.

CSO reports IMB as saying in a report: “SIP is one of the most commonly used application layer protocols in VoIP technology…we found that there has been an upward trend in attacks targeting the SIP protocol, with the most notable uptick occurring in the second half of 2016.

“In actual attacks on VoIP communications, we note various types of disruption. Spikes in July and September were mostly the result of specially crafted SIP messages that were terminated incorrectly. Persistent, invalid messages are known to cause vulnerable servers and equipment to fail. The spike in October 2016 was largely influenced by SIP messages with invalid characters in the SIP “To” field. These could be reflective of suspicious activity, necessitating further investigation.”

While attacks utilising SIP are on the rise, those targeting the SCCP protocol have dropped slightly.

“A large majority of the security events targeting the SCCP protocol — nearly 74 per cent— are actually pre-attack probes that enable the perpetrators to examine device capabilities and gather information on potential targets,” IBM was quoted as saying.

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