During his presentation in the recent MediaConnect security forum, Nigel Stewart, McAfee regional sales manager for Southeast Asia and India, said that although no high-profile cases have been recorded yet, VOIP would eventually become the target for hackers and malicious code writers.

VOIP is a category of hardware and software that enables its users to utilize the Internet as the transmission medium for telephone calls. Voice data is sent in packets rather than by traditional POTS (plain old telephone system) circuits.

One advantage of VOIP is that the telephone calls over the Internet do not incur a surcharge beyond what the user is paying for Internet access, much in the same way that the user doesn't pay for sending individual e-mails over the Internet.

'Its growing adoption from both the business and consumer side will make it attractive for exploitation,' he added.

McAfee believes that VOIP attacks would most likely take advantage of the various layers of the technology such as the transmission layer or hardware devices used to make VOIP calls.