VoIP Susceptible to Hacking

Recently, VoIP technology has achieved acceptance throughout the nation and it has turned out to be one of the most important means of communication. With the increase in its popularity and usage, the potential risks of hacking are also becoming one of the prime concerns.

When VoIP initially started off, the main concerns were related to the consistency, functionality and the expenses. But the VoIP technology has lived up to all these aspects and are now almost on the verge of overwhelming the traditional telephone. This has made it one of the most inviting things to the hackers and has therefore raised major security issues.

VoIP security can be breached in a number of ways. The commonest of them are the identity and service theft. VoIP is also made vulnerable by the fact that encryption has not been made widespread in SIP and this opens the doors to the hackers to steal user credentials. Certain malware and viruses can break into VoIP systems just the same way they break into web-based applications. These viruses can attact VoIP in numerous ways: while some clog the networks and consume the bandwidth making the users lose connectivity, the others are responsible for spamming and jamming the voicemail. The hackers may even be capable of tampering with phone calls.

From: tmcnet