Book Review

Voice over IP (VoIP) is quickly replacing traditional telephone systems for both consumers and enterprises. Merging voice communications onto the data network provdies a variety of benefits, however it is also a double-edged sword that opens voice communications to a whole new realm of attacks and security issues. Himanshu Dwivedi takes on the task of explaining the security concerns of VoIP and providing actionable information you can use to protect your voice communications from these attacks.

Voice over IP (VoIP) communications are a core component of the next wave of communications. Consumers and enterprises both are beginning to grasp the benefits of VoIP communications and making the switch from traditional voice communications to VoIP.

VoIP can be a double-edged sword as well though. It provides cost savings. It adds flexibility and extensibility that isn't possible with traditional telephone communications. It enables a whole new scope of applications to interact with and leverage voice communications in whole new ways.

However, with all of those benefits, it also merges voice data onto the standard data network and exposes what was a relatively secure system to a wide variety of attacks and exploits. Traditional voice attacks like eavesdropping or wiretapping are still issues, but on a grander scale. And now voice communications can also be subjected to denial-of-service (DoS) and man-in-the-middle (MiTM) and other attacks that have traditionally been reserved for data networks.

With Hacking VoIP: Protocols, Attacks, and Countermeasures from No Starch Press, Himanshu Dwivedi explores the security issues inherent with VoIP communications and how to protect your VoIP system against them.

Dwivedi opens the book by walking through how to build a VoIP lab environment to use as you read through the book to get first-hand experience and understanding of the VoIP attacks and exploits and the countermeasures to use against them. This hands-on experience helps the reader to see the attacks in action rather than just reading about them.

The book provides a good background on the VoIP protocols themselves, and Dwivedi does an excellent job of explaining the weaknesses and exploits. VoIP admins should read this book and follow Dwivedi's advice to protect their VoIP environments.