Internet Phone Faces Threats and Fraud cases
Voip phone service offers the ultimate calling experience. There is no denying of that but we have also seen that the year 2009 saw the most Voip fraud cases ever to have recorded in the history of internet phones. Hackers forced into people’s Voip business accounts and even messed up with government internet phone facilities to swindle people and rob them or try disturbing vital operations.
Today, Voip frauds have given rise to an alarming situation within the world from security aspect. Sometime ago, in Italy, a grouping of schemers were detained for pilfering calling minutes from various phone companies globally and provided aid to the terrorists’ actions and activities.
Presently, the ratio of Voip attacks is increasing and a number of business firms and large organizations are having a hard time figuring it out the plausible solution to these arising threats, since these pose maximum risk to the company’s operational function and accounts management. Today, the FBI immediately detains anyone who is involved in VoIP fraud cases. Many have been arrested for the crime in the past. Quite recently, a VoIP convict Edwin Pena from Mexico was apprehended by the FBI who was guilty of a major VoIP fraud swindle involving approximately 1 million US Dollars.
What are the main threats to this scam? Large business enterprises, finance firms, utility providers (gas electricity), telecos, government and defense authorities.
As the need for Voip service is increasing, so are the VoIP security threats. According to a study conducted by Infonetics research, the global VoIP services market earned approximately $20.7 billion only during the first semester of 2009. This is a welcoming advancement, even so when the economic times weren’t as strong to hold such a figure. This is also a reason to drive hackers to target Voip, because they see companies earning millions of dollars with the help of this technology. Moreover, business Voip services are more prone to this deceit than residential voip services.
Two Significant Threats — Voip Toll Fraud and ‘Vishing’
Lately, there are two kinds of Voip service threats which have been noted as a repetitive behavior or hacking action followed by the hackers – Toll Fraud and ‘Vishing’ (Voip ‘Phising’).
Toll fraud gets inside a VoIP account and takes over the authority of making outbound internet phone calls. This can easily be done by hacking weak passwords and taking control of the system and vital information such as who is calling, where he/she is calling from, address, and in worse conditions, bank details and so forth. But, primarily, the hacker just wants to utilize the owner’s free calling facility.
The other kind of Voip fraud is Voip Phising or Vishing. Hackers or ‘vishers’ invade VoIP services to open “vishing” fraud. In Vishing, the hacker or visher aims to attack the Voip phone systems for the purpose of messing with the VoIP features for example auto-attendant. This way they get access to all the confidential information and financial data belonging to the owner in order to plan for an even bigger theft. In this way, the hacker poses to be the owner and might possibly make contacts with your business associates or call your bank and know about your account balances. Scary but true.
The question is how does the scam take place? How does the hacker launch the attack? This normally takes place by sending an e-mail or text message requesting the beneficiary to call at a certain provided number. This way they get access to the owner’s bank account number. When the owner calls at the provided number, he is asked to present the required information. This is carried out by an automated system, which is hosted onto a VoIP platform. These attacks tend to focus on SIP protocols, which are more platform-free.
These attacks can be prevented from occurring if you only learn to stop these attacks from taking place by protecting your networks, by allotting passwords. Besides that, you should use updated Voip and anti-virus softwares and create firewalls. Bear it in mind that you should use a bit difficult passwords. Normally, hackers attempt to hack your Voip by getting hold of your passwords.
The good news is since FBI has stepped in the field, this might also help in reduction of Voip fraud cases greatly.
I totally agree with the above comments that Internet phones though give us opportunity to save money but they are still unsecured.
security is missing on internet phones. The traditional phones are very well secured. VoIP was not much secured before but now it is being secured with improvements.
I am using VoIP. Yes security measure is missing but they have managed to make it secure. Now it’s improving. You guys can go ahead.