Next Generation Network (Ngn) Security: Preventing Attacks to Voip Infrastructures

The use of VoIP technologies is more and more widespread today, since the broadband access to the Internet, which is required for this technology, is now available for a big part of the users. However the security features of SIP seem to be not enough to deal with the attacks of the new generation and, in a scenario in which Internet Telephony becomes usable by everybody, the security issue is fundamental. In addition to Eavesdropping, Hijacking, Identity theft, Denial of Service, and many other threats, Internet Telephony is sensible to SPAM attacks, and it is easy to foresee that VoIP users will become soon easy targets of SPIT (SPam over Internet Telephony) attacks. Between the security features adopted by SIP, no one seems, at the moment, to be able to deal with this category of attacks. Since this kind of attack is still not common at the moment, traces of real SPIT attacks are still not available in literature, so it is not possible to test the prevention methods with a real traffic. Therefore, a simulative approach seems to be the only solution. This dissertation describes the design and the implementation of a simulator which is able to test SPIT prevention methods.