The good and the bad associated with Voice over IP (VoIP) is becoming clearer. Increasingly, consumers and enterprises are turning to VoIP because it can save them money and enable them to take advantage of features, such as unified messaging. As this networking option gains popularity, however, it has also become a prime target for hackers. What makes sending commercial messages over VoIP networks appealing is that, like e-mail spamming, it can be done quickly and inexpensively.
The Internet was never developed in an awareness of the real world of human nature. It was built in, and remains in, an academic environment, where security, identity, etc. are not design goals. It was subsidized by the US taxpayer for many years. Protocol development was ended largely for federal cost reasons, decades ago, despite Bob Kahn's dedication, and its release into the real world was naively subsidized by free inclusion in Unix, from UCB and every system manufacturer. The only surprise is that it took as long as it did to have 40M of our credit cards hacked out of a commercial system a few months ago. VoIP is plagued by the same rush to market. Without first re-establishing the built-in security of the real telephone network (PSTN), VoIP will end up costing us far more than advertized. The Internet's (and VoIP's) problems could have been solved decades ago, as they largely had been in commercial networks, such as SNA, DECNet, Netware, Vines... Now, we spend $B to try to secure a weak protocol family whose design doesn't even include the fundamentals of identity and security that an old-fashioned telephone network fortunately still provides to us. AC
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VoIP Emerging as Next Spam Entryway
Posted by: Paul Korzeniowski August 24, 2005 05:00 AMThe good and the bad associated with Voice over IP (VoIP) is becoming clearer. Increasingly, consumers and enterprises are turning to VoIP because it can save them money and enable them to take advantage of features, such as unified messaging. As this networking option gains popularity, however, it has also become a prime target for hackers. What makes sending commercial messages over VoIP networks appealing is that, like e-mail spamming, it can be done quickly and inexpensively.
VoIP is plagued by the same rush to market. Without first re-establishing the built-in security of the real telephone network (PSTN), VoIP will end up costing us far more than advertized.
The Internet's (and VoIP's) problems could have been solved decades ago, as they largely had been in commercial networks, such as SNA, DECNet, Netware, Vines... Now, we spend $B to try to secure a weak protocol family whose design doesn't even include the fundamentals of identity and security that an old-fashioned telephone network fortunately still provides to us.
AC