VoIP companies have recently been the target of a series of ransom Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks around the globe with UK-based VoIP providers including VoIP Unlimited, and Quebec-based company VoIP.ms being hit by aggressive and sustained attacks destabilizing their infrastructure and causing massive disruption to services.
These DDoS attacks on VoIP providers have been making headlines and according to Hackread.com the attacks on VoIP.ms started on September 16th, targeting their DNS name servers and other infrastructure to disrupt their telephony services resulting in people being unable to make or receive calls. The company’s website remained difficult to access for some days after the attacks were first acknowledged.
A group known as REvil has claimed responsibility for these DDoS attacks on the VoIP sector, demanding 1 bitcoin (approx. $55,000) from VoIP.ms to stop the attacks, but it is not known if they are the same as the prolific ransomware group of the same name. VoIP unlimited also claimed to have received a massive ransom demand to stop the attacks.
Upsurge in DDoS Attacks on VoIP in the Telecom Sector
Imperva Research Labs have monitored a significant rise in DDoS incidents targeting the telecom industry, which includes VoIP providers, since July 2021. Particularly noteworthy is the significant increase in September, which illustrates the scale of the DDoS attacks on VoIP problem that telecom providers are facing.
Number of Layer 7 DDoS Attacks monitored on the Telecom and ISPs from Jan to Sept 2021
The majority (95%) of Volumetric Network DDoS attacks on the Telecom industry are UDP attacks including UDP garbage floods that can significantly impact VoIP traffic.
What is VoIP?
VoIP, or Voice over Internet Protocol, is a collection of protocols that make telephone calls and multimedia sessions available over the internet. One of the biggest advantages of using VoIP is the cost savings available by carrying out calls over the internet and ruling out the need for costly hardware infrastructure. Another advantage of VoIP technology, especially in recent times, is the ease of accessibility thanks to cloud-based VoIP providers which allow teams to stay connected even remotely.
Speed and latency at the heart of VoIP technology
To perform successfully and provide a fast and reliable service, VoIP technology is reliant on a strong and stable internet connection. Any disruption to network bandwidth can impact performance and make an organization susceptible to DDoS Attacks on VoIP. In addition to that, latency and jitter are also common connection issues for any voice and video based technology. These issues can severely impact the user experience and call quality.
Each message communicated online whether email, video, or audio is broken down into small fragments that are reassembled at their destination to create the original message or a stream of data. Latency and jitter occur when these packets either hit delays, are lost or aren’t reassembled properly. One of the main causes of latency and jitter is a poor internet connection with limited capacity. And what better way to create excessive bandwidth usage on your network than with DDoS attacks on VoIP.
To ensure speed, performance, and reliability and guard against DDoS attacks on VoIP, providers need robust DDoS protection in place to maintain capacity and minimize load and latency on their networks.
VoIP DDoS Protection
Imperva can mitigate DDoS attacks on VoIP and protect VoIP infrastructure thanks to our global network of 47 PoPs with a scrubbing capacity of over 9Tbps. Our effective automated mitigation and constantly evolving threat intelligence coupled with our proprietary and dedicated scrubbing technology, gives us ample processing and mitigation capacity to accurately cancel out the noise and facilitate the needs that VoIP traffic requires to support a superb video and voice quality of service.
Add to that our proximity to the internet hubs and exchanges and our ability to scrub over 65 billion packets per second, we can withstand and mitigate any attack of any size without introducing high latency or jitter, in under 3 seconds for our always-on customers.
Our recommendation is for all businesses to invest in always-on DDoS protection that is capable of mitigating DDoS attacks on VoIP and other attacks in seconds.
If your organization has been targeted by a DDoS attack or ransom DDoS threat we can help you mitigate the attack with minimal disruption to your services and customers. Visit our DDoS Protection page to find out how we do it.
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