What is VoIP fraud? VoIP fraud is a fraud type of using a company's paid services without permission. It is hard to detect and difficult to trace.
What is VoIP fraud? Even if you've heard it, you may not know exactly what it means. In VoIP attacks, the target is variable. VoIP fraud means carrying out an attack by manipulating VoIP communications. The attacker profits from his activities.
Unauthorized use of paid communication services occurs when VoIP fraud is committed. If not detected on time, the fraud can cause damage that will consume your capital and earnings within minutes.
What does VoIP fraud mean?
VoIP phones allow phone calls over an internet connection, not traditional methods. Its working principle is very complex, but basically, it is like a phone call. The reason for use is budget and resource savings.
VoIP fraud means using a company's paid communication services without someone's knowledge or consent. The fraudster can earn from this by marketing services to other people. Therefore, it is a big problem for companies.
VoIP fraud is a term that started to become popular in 2006. In 2006, two people were arrested for breaking into an unauthorized network. The attackers made money by selling the company's VoIP network traffic to other people.
VoIP frauds are shared all over the world. This fraud is most common in the USA, UK, Pakistan, India, and the Philippines. So, these countries have a significant share of VoIP fraud numbers.
Why is VoIP fraud important?
VoIP fraud is important because it threatens your company's security. Security is valuable to companies of all sizes. The slightest intervention to your call system can cause chaos for the company and cause severe financial losses.
VoIP fraud is no different from VoIP attacks. Attackers infiltrate the VoIP systems by exploiting vulnerabilities in VoIP networks. After the infiltration, they use your network for their own purposes and make money from it.
Suppose you have not taken various measures for VoIP security and do not keep your system under constant control. In that case, you may be a victim of VoIP fraud. You need to think about everything from encryption of VoIP calls to secure passwords for device access.
How does VoIP fraud happen?
The fraudster must sneak into a VoIP network or device to commit VoIP fraud. To achieve this, it conducts a worldwide scan. It activates the infiltration plan by capturing weak targets and exploiting their weaknesses.
Targeting: The fraudster tries to find the most vulnerable VoIP device to perform call forwarding. Usually, users whose device login information is default username and password are targeted.
Device login: The fraudster gains control after successfully logging into a device with the default username and password. It starts making expensive international calls over the VoIP network.
Sales transactions: The fraudster starts to sell the VoIP call route he has obtained at a much lower price. The hacked person continues to bear all the costs while the fraudster becomes the beneficiary.
The method that the VoIP fraudster will follow is as follows. VoIP fraudsters generally choose their targets from those farthest from them. Thus, they reduce their chances of being caught as much as possible.
What are the most common VoIP fraud types?
There is not just one method of VoIP fraud. Fraudsters attack using different techniques. They do not hesitate to try newly developed methods from time to time. They often prefer a combination of several ways to exploit security threats.
1. Arbitrage
Arbitrage involves exploiting the complexity of VoIP operators. The agreement between country A and country B may have lower rates than between country A and country C. VoIP fraudsters take advantage of this situation.
Under normal circumstances, the cost of traffic from country C to country A is high. The fraudster offers cheaper rates by sending VoIP traffic over country B for country C. What it actually does is routing from a leaked VoIP network.
2. Call transfer fraud
Call transfer fraud is a problem only for soft switch users. The fraudster gains access to the private branch exchange. Then he goes on to use all the services in part it accesses to make long-term calls free of charge.
In the call transfer method, the fraudster transfers the traffic right to their phone services after violating the PBX security. Subscribers who receive telephone service from the fraudster make conversations through the soft switch manipulated and hacked by the fraudster.
3. Bypass fraud
The bypass fraud method adds VoIP traffic to another operator's network without permission. The fraudster bypasses the usual payment system for international calls. So it makes money by claiming to offer international calls cheaper.
The situation that enables the fraudster to make a profit is that they can offer long-distance calls cheaply. When any customer calls a number, the call is manipulated to appear as a domestic call. Thus, all costs are borne by the company that owns the VoIP network.
4. Buffer overflow
The buffer overflow method is very similar to the computer fraud process. Fraudsters check the processing status of session initiation protocol packets. While the process is in progress, they check for errors over the buffer overflow. When an error is detected, fraud is committed.
The fraud can crash applications thanks to the flaws it finds in the buffer overflow. Alternatively, it can run arbitrary code. Although buffer overflow was a severe problem in the past, it has been significantly eliminated with the security measures taken.
VoIP fraud is a highly lucrative crime. This is due to the high cost of operating the system. Organizations using VoIP and VoIP service providers have to ensure the security of their communication networks. Otherwise, they may become victims of fraud.
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