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Tuesday, 01 May 2007 |
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VoIP-based threat of unsolicited messages grows as US$1bn anti-harvesting case kicks off…
According to the second ‘Global Threat Report’ published by security technology company McAfee, voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is now a messaging medium ripe for exploitation by spammers and other senders of malicious Internet traffic. Indeed, says the report (also extracted in the company’s ‘Sage’ journal) VoIP spam - also known as SPam over Internet Telephony (SPIT) - could rejuvenate the telemarketing industry, allowing spammers to circumvent legislation in countries that have adopted do-not-call laws.
According to McAfee the attractions of SPIT to spammers are several. Unlike traditional phone service, VoIP allows spammers to place a large volume of calls virtually free. Worse still, calls can be forged to fool more victims. Spoofed VoIP phishing attacks will likely be more successful than their e-mail counterparts because anti-SPIT technology is far behind that of anti-spam, and many VoIP users do not expect phishing attacks to come from names and numbers that match those of their banks.
McAfee also points out that VoIP technology itself is vulnerable to eavesdropping, recording, and hijacking, that connecting to public Wi-Fi VoIP hotspots puts any device at additional risk from attackers on the same network, and that direct attacks could allow attackers to send ‘exploit’ traffic directly to vulnerable Wi-Fi devices, bypassing the access point itself to take complete control over the host computer.
But the fight against spam goes on. In a new development, last week US anti-spam service Project Honey Pot, which collects information on e-mail address harvesters, filed the largest anti-spam lawsuit ever. In a court in the Eastern District of Virginia in what is termed a ‘John Doe’ action Project Honey Pot, on behalf of its members, is seeking more than US$1bn in statutory damages. A posting on the organisation’s website stated: “It (the lawsuit) targets a huge swath of spammers. If you've harvested e-mail addresses or sent spam in the last two years, chances are you're on our radar screen and we're coming after you.”
We say: all power to your elbow.
John Williamson
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