[VOIPSEC] SPIT and vishing

[Thijs van Esveld]

Thank you all for the help. This last week really got me answers to some
stuff I didn't fully understand yet.

I got a few questions about my research and if it will be publicly available
when its done. To start with the last question, My school probably wants to
make it available, but unfortunately the report is completely written in
Dutch (I preferred to write in English but the school wants it this way).

When my report is finished I hope it's readable even for people without a
technical background. I made some simple scenarios to make things clearer
and it seems readable to people without any knowledge of VoIP or networking
for that matter. When I'm done I'm going to try and contact some agencies
that inform people about internet security, maybe they are interested about
the information I gathered about these issues. the vishing problem seems to
be concentrating mostly in the US, but we never now when it will come to
Europe so we better be ready before it happens.

My research is not academic in nature but I might be able to arrange new
projects that are. I was just asking around here to some fellow students how
to describe my school which seems to be similar to a University of Applied
Sciences, so a bit more practical and less research oriented then a real
university. If you have any suggestions for subjects that really need
academic research please let me know. I'm writing my report in a company and
they are always looking for students to do thier thesis projects on all
sorts of (mostly IT) related subjects and I can make some suggestions for
projects that can be added to the pool of thesis assignments.

I have one more question regarding SPIT. While I was making my report
several sources talked about SPIT moving to the PSTN network. While ISPs
connect thier VoIP gateways to the PSTN and the prices of calling from VoIP
to the PSTN getting cheaper and cheaper the PSTN seems to become a viable
target for SPIT also. OPTA (a dutch organisation that regultates
telecommunications) wants that VoIP users are able to call and be called by
users of the PSTN so targets are easy to find since you only need to open
the phonebook. Will this be a realistic scenario when used for phone spam or
vishing purposes?

Thank you again for all for the help so far, if there are any questions left
about me or my project please don't hesitate to contact me.

Greetings,
Thijs