Public telephone network vulnerabilities

The convergence of public telephone networks (PTNs), wireless networks and the Internet makes it possible to disrupt vital information and communications systems from afar with software. PTN vulnerabilities are also growing due to system complexity, deregulation, increasing numbers of highly-skilled attackers, and the automation of attacks. This paper analyzes PTNs vulnerabilities, and presents an attack taxonomy. The taxonomy considers security threats posed by in-band attacks, out-of-band attacks, wireless attacks and Internet attacks.