A lightweight protection mechanism against signaling attacks in a SIP-based VoIP environment

The advent of Voice over IP (VoIP) has offered numerous advantages but, at the same time, it has introduced security threats not previously encountered in networks with a closed architecture like the Public Switch Telephone Networks (PSTN). One of these threats is that of signaling attacks. This paper examines the signaling attacks in VoIP environments based on the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), focusing on the design of a robust lightweight protection mechanism against them. The proposed scheme introduces a new SIP header, namely the Integrity-Auth header, which is utilized for protecting the SIP-based VoIP services from signaling attacks while ensuring authenticity and integrity.