Today, NEC Corporation announced the development of new technology for the prevention of Spam over Internet Telephony, VoIP SEAL™.
The company plans to demonstrate the technology next month at the 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona but still has more work to do before it can sell a commercial product.
The main features of VoIP SEAL™ are as follows:
- Calls arising from spam-generating-software and calls from real individuals are separated by a Turing test ( - a famous method in the information science field for testing whether the caller is a human or a machine by testing a machine's capability to perform human-like conversation. This method was described by Alan Turing in 1950). Before connecting the call, VoIP SEAL™ detects and blocks the unauthorized access based on the communication pattern observed during a call. This enables the detection and blocking of SPIT and prevents the user's phone from ringing unnecessarily.
- By adopting a module structure, VoIP SEAL™ enables rapid response to new kinds of SPIT attacks, without adjusting the system, by adding and updating modules to respond to new and different kinds of SPIT.
- The adoption of a module structure also realizes response to a broad range of applications by enabling flexible and easy customization of systems to meet the needs of a variety of hardware, such as SIP servers, SBC( - A Session Border Controller (SBC) is a session-aware device that manages VoIP and modem-over-IP ("MoIP") calls at the borders of an IP network. It prevents unauthorized access and guarantees security in the connection between networks. Unlike most network devices, session border controllers are aware of the relationship between the two parts of a VoIP call: signalling and media), home network equipment and terminal equipment.
NEC carried out a SPIT attack
( SPIT attack simulation project: the calls taken at NEC's Network Laboratories (Heidelberg, Germany) were used as samples in the SPIT attack simulation project. SPIT were imitated from botnet calls. The characteristics of botnets and the content of calls originating from botnets are well known in the industry. NEC employed botnets that have already been recorded in literary documents. The SPIT detection rate was measured during the project as 99%) simulation project employing VoIP SEAL(TM) to verify the technology's ability to protect against SPIT. This project showed that 99% of SPIT was detected and blocked, preventing users from receiving unwanted and bothersome calls.
NEC said that they would work on getting the system compatible with different types of hardware, such as SIP servers, home network equipment and session border controls. They have not revealed any timeline of a possible commercial launch of this technology
NEC did not say when a commercial product might become available.
Source : NEC
