NEC SEAL will prevent VoIP SPIT

SecurityProNews reports on an announcement from NEC about a new product called SEAL that will be capable of preventing VoIP SPIT, otherwise known as VoIP Spam over Internet Technology.

The new SEAL technology uses the Turing Test that measures how well a computer can imitate a human voice. There have been rumblings around the web recently on the potential threat posed by spam and phishing to the adoption of VoIP by businesses and consumers, so much so that a new term has been created to describe the problem, vishing.

So instead of spamming your inbox with fake messages from your bank or credit card company, criminal elements will be able to call a number and play back a fake telephone message purporting to be from a financial institution. The fact that somebody has seemingly gone to the effort to contact you about a ‘problem’ may be convincing enough for some to hand over their banking details.

NEC’s Turing Test based solution will test the message and if it fails, alert you to the issue. I wonder how long it will be before we’ll all be running Norton or McAfee software on our phones.