VoIP security -- Free IP telephony fuzzing tools

Fuzzing is a form of stress testing using malformed packets. Fuzzing is also known as functional protocol testing or robustness testing. It is usually used to automate vulnerability discovery. It finds bugs and vulnerabilities by producing different packet types that target a protocol. The fuzzing attack pushes the protocol's design specifications to the breaking point. It is often used by developers and vendor internal QA groups to test their protocol implementations.

It is dangerous to assume that the protocol implementations produced by a vendor are all identical. The protocol software can vary by software release and version. Chapter 11 of "Hacking VoIP Exposed," www.hackingvoip.com, provides a more in-depth discussion of the technique.

The electrical engineering department at Finland's University of Oulu has been working on VoIP security issues and has a good site to access, http://www.ee.oulu.fi/research. This site deals with specific signaling protocol attacks. Another resource is a long presentation by Hendrik Scholz, "SIP Stack Fingerprinting and Stack Difference Attacks," http://www.blackhat.com/presentations/bh-usa-06/BH-US-06-Scholz.pdf, which was given at the 2006 Black Hat conference. This security conference now

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has a separate track discussing VoIP security.

Any tools that attack an enterprise's security will of course cause damage to the operation of VoIP if they are used improperly. The links listed below usually have instructions covering the proper use of the tool, but even following the instructions may not eliminate damage.

This list contains free and commercial tools. There are many other free and commercial tools that are used by developers that can also be used to attack VoIP components. This tool list is not exhaustive; other free and commercial tools are available. The primary source for the tool list is www.voipsa.org from the VoIP Security Alliance. The tools in this tip deal only with fuzzing attacks.

The following is the list of free and commercial fuzzing tools:

The third tip in this series will focus on packet creation and signaling manipulation. Another set of resources and tutorials will also be included in the next tip.

About the author:
Gary Audin has more than 40 years of computer, communications and security experience. He has planned, designed, specified, implemented and operated data, LAN and telephone networks. These have included local area, national and international networks, as well as VoIP and IP convergent networks, in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Australia and Asia.

MOTT How to use fuzzing to deter VoIP protocol attacks http://searchvoip.techtarget.com/tip/0,289483,sid66_gci1163561,00.html

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