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Expert Unveils 'Scary' VoIP Hack

Posted by Zonk on from the keep-it-close-to-your-chest dept.

Kurtz'sKompund passed us a link to a Techworld article on a frightening new vulnerability for VoIP. The UK's Peter Cox has put together a proof-of-concept software package to illustrate the flaw, a program he's calling SIPtap. "The software is able to monitor multiple Voice-over-IP (VoIP) call streams, listening in and recording them for remote inspection as .wav files. All that the criminal would need would be to infect a single PC inside the network with a Trojan incorporating these functions, although the hack would work at ISP level as well. The program can index 'IP-tapped' calls by caller - using SIP identity information - and by recipient, and even by date."

1 of 103 comments (clear)

  1. This is soo old! by Kris2k · · Score: 3, Informative

    I recall seeing a project on freshmeat in 1999-2000 about the exact same functionnality. Granted, it wasn't as refined as this one, but it did exactly what it had to do; sniff packets over the wire, decode them, and send them to your DSP.

    This is old, and that's why people today use VLAN tagged phones to seperate VOIP traffic onto another network, combined with switches that don't allow promiscuous activities, intrusion detection systems, picky switches that don't like MAC changes, and voilà, problem solved for the distribution networks.

    There will always be ways to tap coversations, and if you think you pots land line is secure *chuckle*, get real.