Several experts estimate, that the losses caused by fraud amount to 5% of the operator income in the traditional telecommunication industry, which is estimated to increase by more than 10% per year. If you take into account the initial problems caused by the introduction of a new techology like VoIP, the openness of VoIP and the low-cost approach of current VoIP solutions, it is realistic to assume a higher threat potential combinded and even higher losses. Thus fraud and abuse of service present one of the biggest challenges for VoIP providers. Especially banks and credit card issuers have a fundamental interest in pushing research and development in those areas, because secure execution of their business practices is of paramount importance to their business model.

There is a huge knowledge gap associated with VoIP services because there have been few research results or solutions ripe for production available. The SUNsHINE project wants to help close this gap. SUNsHINE offers a solution that allows to automatically recognize many VoIP-based fraud attempts. To do this, the detection system includes two approaches: first, SUNsHINE uses well-tested statistical modelling methods to recognize VoIP anomalies, which already have prevailed in the banking-, credit card- and telecommuncations industry up to today. Especially important to this approach is the evaluation of specific service and runtime characteristics compared to normal operations. Second, an innovative approach based on the correlation of multi-protocol events utilizing specific signatures of involved VoIP components. The intended solution not only has the goal of providing a high detection rate, but also to offer a resource-optimized implementation.

To make assurances about the effective performance of our solution, the system undergoes test procedures during the entire development cycle and is tested for conformance to predetermined criteria. The consortium we created for this project mainly consists of small businesses (GeNUA, ISACO), that offer VoIP related products. The small businesses are complemented by two renowned research facilities (Fraunhofer society, University of Duisburg-Essen), which are known for their competence in the area of VoIP.

To the SUNsHINE project page