VoIP Applications: Risk of Botnet Control And DoS Attacks

Internet telephone applications like Skype and Vonage could become hacker hideouts, technologists and academics funded by MIT and Cambridge University say. Internet telephone applications like Skype and Vonage could become hacker hideouts, a group of technologists and academics funded by MIT and Cambridge University said Thursday. According to the Communications Research Network (CRN), voice-over-Internet (VoIP) software could give perfect cover for launching denial-of-service (DoS) attacks.

Jon Crowcroft, a Cambridge professor and the lead CRN researcher on the problem, noted that if botnet "herders," the term given to attackers who control large numbers of bot-infected PCs, turn to VoIP applications for command and control, security experts might find it impossible to trace back an attack to the perpetrator. Current practice by most botnet herders is to issue commands to their armies of "zombie" machines over IRC (Internet Relay Chat) channels, or less frequently, via instant messaging (IM).

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