Measures sought against VoIP spam

12 March 2008

Over the next six to twelve months the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) is to assess possible measures against "spit" (spam attacks against internet telephony connections). At the 71st meeting of the IETF in Philadelphia the proponents of a first draft architecture had a tough time with their proposal because reliable figures are not yet available for the current threat to internet telephony. However in the end, a majority of the developers did approve the setting up of a "reconnaissance group", tasked with documenting potential threat scenarios and possible countermeasures. A previous proposal for a regular IETF working group on countermeasures to VoIP spam had failed.