VoIP May Make Eavesdropping Easier

Sep 4, 2007 4:37 PM

A leading member of the Jericho Forum security group has criticized the security of voice over IP technology after researchers revealed that it was possible to eavesdrop on VoIP conversations, according to ZDNet UK.

An eavesdropping vulnerability was revealed on the Full Disclosure mailing. Vulnerability researchers Humberto Abdelnur, Radu State and Olivier Festor claimed the exploit could allow a remote attacker to turn a VoIP phone into an eavesdropping device, citing a Grandstream SIP phone as an example.

The Jericho Forum is an international group of leading corporate security professionals, academics and vendors, and promotes the development of secure software architectures, among other IT security interests.

Paul Simmonds, a member of Jericho Forum's board of management, says that VoIP is not yet ready for use in businesses. "We don't consider VoIP to be enterprise-ready," Simmonds says. "You can't run VoIP on a corporate network because you can't trust every single device on that network. VoIP as it stands certainly isn't secure. Going forward, everybody should be using inherently secure protocols."

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