CAREER: Increasing Trust and Reducing Abuse in Telephone Networks

Unsolicited phone calls, also known as robocalls, are one of the most pervasive and visible network security problems in the United States. Despite the sincere efforts of telephone providers, regulators, legislators, and technologists, there are virtually no consistently effective countermeasures. The project’s novelties are in creating technical solutions that will empower regulators and providers to stop robocalling at scale.

The project's broader significance and importance lie in dramatically improving the security and trustworthiness of the telephone network and, in so doing, restoring the telephone network as a useful communications medium.

The goal of this work is to end the scourge of unsolicited phone calls by creating new techniques to detect abusive actors, restore trust in telephony by positively authenticating all phone calls, and prevent compromises of Internet voice infrastructure that would enable robocall abuse. The principal methodologies include developing threat intelligence, designing secure and privacy-preserving protocols, conducting Internet-scale measurement, and call audio analysis.

This project is also developing public information campaigns, operator and regulator training, and telephone security content for network security courses.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.