Security weakness discovered in VoIP

The Communications Research Network (CRN) reported recently that it had found a weakness in VoIP, saying that the sheer amount of packets used by VoIP to transmit information provides perfect cover to launch distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. As described by Jon Crowcroft, a principal investigator with CRN, DDoS attacks are when "large amounts of low-level traffic are targeted at a particular organization, rendering its servers unable to cope and shutting the company off from the Internet."

To lessen the severity of the danger, Crowcroft suggest that VoIP providers that use proprietary protocols should publish their specifications or switch to open standards, which would allow the tracking of DDoS attacks. For more information, see VoIP gives attackers perfect cover, written by Crowcroft.