Energy-efficient security for voice over IP

Abstract

The fast spread of handheld smart devices contributed to the development of VoIP softphones running over such devices. Most security mechanisms were mainly designed for desktop PCs and hence did not take into consideration the power constraints of handheld devices. This fact highly motivated the development of new security mechanisms that try to minimize the energy consumption without compromising the security of the exchanged data. In this paper, we propose an energy-efficient security algorithm for VoIP applications running on mobile devices (SecVoIP). The algorithm resolves several weaknesses available in current algorithms while maintaining an appropriate security level. Several experiments were conducted and the results showed significant improvement in processing time, CPU cycles, and consumed energy as compared to SRTP, one of the most widely used security protocols for VoIP. Moreover, we present the results of extensive experimental work that demonstrates that known plaintext attacks against audio streams are not feasible.