Book Review: Hacking VoIP
Himanshu Dwivedi and I worked together a few years back as co-authors of Hacker’s Challenge 3. That was a fun project and I still enjoy reading the stories. That style of book – providing information or education in the guise of a fictional story – just works for me.
Dwivedi has written or contributed to a number of other books as well, the latest of which is Hacking VoIP: Protocols, Attacks, and Countermeasures from No Starch Press. Voice over IP (VoIP) is one of the hottest technologies going today, and is also one of the core components of unified communications, which is also hot. Consumers and enterprises both are making the switch from traditional telephony to VoIP, but as with any new technology it seems to get deployed without regard for the security concerns.
The various protocols used to facilitate VoIP communications are vulnerable to a variety of attacks and exploits that traditional telephony did not have to worry about. Dwivedi does an excellent job of explaining the protocols, describing their weaknesses and inherent security concerns, and providing the reader with the tools to secure and protect their VoIP communications against these attacks. You can read my review of Hacking VoIP: Protocols, Attacks, and Countermeasures for more details about this title.