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Is VoIP Able to Defend Against Attacks?

In early September of this year, a number of Skype’s old-timers found their operations beset and bedeviled by the W/32 Skipi. However, as far as malware troubles went, it was pretty much normal, even typical. Just another virus hobbling Skype operations, whether via direct connections via cordless phones such as the VoIP 841 from Philips or the RTX3088 dual mode cordless phone or through a desktop computer or laptop. Nothing thrillingly grand or terribly objectionable about the worm in question—the virus enters into the system of another user by pretending to be a message. If the user happens to accept the message, the link opens up to display a gaggle of erotic material. These were usually photographs. The worm infects a variety of consumer electronics devices by way of circulating malicious links. Aside from that, it also steals data from other PCs and in some cases, moves this said data into other PCs. So, yes, it’s not only stealing but stealing AND disseminating information that’s supposed to be private.

However, by malware standards, tame is still pretty much the word that fits.

If there was something uniquely interesting about it though, it was the platform for which the creator opted to operate it on—Skype. Skype is one of the most popular communication services and has been owned by eBay since September of the year 1995. To date, there are more than 196 million users of Skype all over.

Industry experts express the idea that these virus writers—while they certainly bring about unnecessary problems to SKypers now—may intentionally be providing exactly the help IT administrators in the industry need in order to bring their security scrutiny to Skype to ever higher levels. This also includes helping enterprise-focused voice over internet protocol (VoIP) counterparts.

Consumers who wish to find any number of ways to reduce bills caused by long distance calls are mainly responsible for boosting up Skype’s popularity. At the same time, corporate honchos are finding their way around the many advantages that enterprise VoIP platforms are capable of offering and they are quick to cue in on the fact of how easy and beneficial is the integration of communications applications on one device to user organization.

Not to mention the fact that VoIP communication systems and consumer electronics devices such as cordless phones with VoIP or VoIP DECT phones—have made it possible for human interaction to proceed in a more efficient and convenient fashion. Factoring in all the ideas floating around regarding VoIP these days, a considerable number of IT officials now find themselves expressing the notion that expediency is already starting to more than compensate for the exceedingly expensive fees of the digital phones—whether cordless phones or wired desk phones—themselves, states Dave Endler, who is currently the director of security research at TippingPoint.

“I believe that it is cost effective, and that you gain a lot more. You’re able to integrate your system with your Active Directory, and in many cases your Microsoft Office applications, and you get a lot more integration and a lot more industry convergence with your traditional data network,” he muses.