VoIP may help cut costs and improve communication efficiencies but this popular technology is also being used to launch phishing attacks against unwitting companies. A number of companies such as Cloudmark are hoping to curb this growing trend by identifying and blocking phishing attacks carried out over VoIP systems to spoof a target's financial institution.

 

Scammers posing as banks are emailing people to dial a number and enter personal information needed to gain access to their finances. Cloudmark, a provider of messaging security solutions for service providers, enterprises and consumers, warns that VoIP services can reduce the costs associated with conducting such attacks, providing the perpetrators with less risk of discovery, and urges recipients of suspicious messages to notify their service providers immediately.

 

By combining a global threat detection network leveraging real-time reporting by trust-rated users with a unique fingerprinting methodology, Cloudmark is able to identify and begin blocking new spam, phishing and virus attacks within moments, versus hours or days required with competing solutions. Cloudmark is capable of accurately identifying and blocking these spoofed-number attacks. The company detected two new VoIP-specific attacks this week. As a precaution, Cloudmark advises against dialing phone numbers received in emails from institutions and to double-check and dial the numbers printed on ATM cards instead.

 

Adam J. O'Donnell, Ph.D., senior research scientist at Cloudmark, says, "We've seen two separate VoIP attacks hit our network this week, the first we've been able to analyze in detail. In these attacks, the target receives an email, ostensibly from their bank, telling them there is an issue with their account and to dial a number to resolve the problem." Callers are then connected over VoIP to a PBX (private branch exchange) running an IVR system that sounds exactly like their own bank's phone tree, directing them to specific extensions. In a VoIP phishing attack, the phone system identifies itself to the target as the financial institution and prompts them to enter account number and PIN. "The result," O'Donnell surmises, "can be personally financially devastating."

 

Traditional content and identity rules based on volume analysis for capturing spam do not work for phishing threats: phishers move quickly, using and breaking down multiple sites to launch the same attack. VoIP-based services allow phishers to cheaply add and cancel phone numbers that are harder to trace than conventional numbers. The Cloudmark Collaborative Security Network's use of unique fingerprinting algorithms is able to identify the phone numbers used in VoIP phishing attacks. The CCSN first spotted and began to block these threats last week. It is characteristic of the network to automatically stop threats without the research team having previously identified them, and thus likely that the CCSN has been stopping VoIP-based attacks for some time.

 

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Cindy Waxer is a Toronto-based freelance journalist specializing in business and technology. She has written for publications including TIME, Fortune Small Business, Business 2.0, Computerworld, Canadian Business, and Workforce Management. To see more of her articles, please visit Cindy Waxer’s columnist page.