SIP proxies: New reflectors in the internet

To mitigate identity theft in SIP networks, an inter-domain authentication mechanism based on certificates is proposed in RFC 4474 [10]. Unfortunately, the design of the certificate distribution in this mechanism yields some vulnerabilities. In this paper, we investigate an attack which exploits SIP infrastructures as reflectors to bring down a web server. Our experiments demonstrate that the attacks can be easily mounted. Finally, we discuss some potential methods to prevent this vulnerability.