Are their more risks to a VoIP service than a traditional phone service?
All new or emerging technologies offer both opportunities and vulnerabilities, particularly if the scale of their adoption is potentially enormous. Many of the motivations to attack VoIP users are the same as telephone service attacks: to benefit financially, via toll fraud, identity and information theft, and to gain notoriety, by disrupting service and inconveniencing users. Such attacks are similar to attacks we have seen on cellular and landline phones for years. Others are all too familiar attacks we see against networked computers. VoIP phones and computers running VoIP software (softphones) are more computer than phone. They have operating and file systems, use Internet protocols, and run data and management as well as voice applications. They are vulnerable to unauthorized access, privilege escalation and “system” misuse. Viruses, worms, and all the “classic” denial of service attacks that exploit network protocols are possible.
