[VOIPSEC] Actual Attacks

[Geoff Devine]

Christopher A. Martin <chris at sip1.com> writes:

> - Standard DoS today in terms of flooding cannot be stopped, but it
can be
> handled in the Internet backbone (which often occurs transparently
> so the rest of us don't see it). 
>
> - Also standard precautions, such as deploying SIP aware firewalls or
border
> controllers which handle the media dynamically prevent a majority of
port
> scans and other direct attacks which low end devices are typically
> susceptible to.

A side effect of using session controllers and their brethren in a VoIP
architecture is that you make the IP address of the endpoint anonymous.
This addresses both privacy concerns and makes DoS attacks against a
subscriber endpoint less likely.  Any architecture that permits media
streams to flow directly between subscriber endpoints is very vulnerable
to DoS attacks on those endpoints.

Geoff