Solution analysis for SIP security threats

Abstract

Session Initial Protocol (SIP) is widely used for handling multimedia signaling. Because SIP is widely used in many multimedia applications, it becomes an attractive target to attackers. Actually, in contrast to traditional telephone networks, SIP works at the application layer in IP networks. It is thus faced to not only the IP-networks security issues, but also to new issues which are related to the SIP protocol directly. In this paper, we present the most relevant SIP-related security vulnerabilities and threats; then, we discuss the different security mechanisms that can be deployed to overcome the SIP security issues while putting emphasis the most important ones. Afterwards, taking into account the targeted security property, we propose adaptable solutions to the SIP threats already identified and we present our implementation and simulation test bed to experiment two versions of the SIP Asterisk software. Finally, we draw out conclusions and we introduce some perspectives to improve the security of multimedia applications.