Implementing a secure VoIP communication over SIP-based networks

Abstract

Recent years the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is commonly used in establishing Voice over IP (VoIP) calls and has become the centerpiece for most VoIP architecture. As wireless and mobile all-IP networks become prosperous, free VoIP applications are utilized in all places. Consequently, the security VoIP is a crucial requirements for its adoption. Many authentication and key agreement schemes are proposed to protect the SIP messages, however, lacking concrete implementations. The performance of VoIP is critical for users’ impressions. In view of this, this paper studies the performance impact of using key agreements, elliptic curve Diffie–Hellman and elliptic curve Menezes–Qu–Vanstone, for making a SIP-based VoIP call. We evaluate the key agreement cost using spongycastle.jce.provider package in Java running on android-based mobile phones, the effect of using different elliptic curves and analyze the security of both key agreements. Furthermore, we design a practical and efficient authentication mechanism to deploy our VoIP architecture and show that a VoIP call can be established in an acceptable interval. As a result, this paper provides a concrete and feasible architecture to secure a VoIP call.