ITU advances global efforts to combat fraudulent communications

Have you ever received a call or text from a trusted friend or organization and found that it was someone else?

Fraudulent communications like number spoofing are now becoming more concerning with the rise of robocalls and the fast-growing ability of artificial intelligence (AI) to impersonate people’s voices.

New standards from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) aim to change this.

An ITU roundtable co-organized with India’s Department of Telecommunications alongside India Mobile Congress on 9 October will discuss the practical dimensions of implementing the standards and the potential for a supporting proof-of-concept initiative. 

The roundtable is open to everyone interested and will also be available online.

New standards developed by ITU-T Study Group 11 (Protocols, testing and combating counterfeiting) provide a set of tools to resolve this problem with digital public-key certificates to authenticate calling-line identification (CLI).

ITU standard Q.3057 specifies the architecture and the trust anchor model; Q.3062 specifies the signalling procedures and the structure of protected messages; and Q.3063 specifies the procedures for CLI authentication.

Associated amendments to ITU standards Q.763 and Q.931 (both for Signalling System 7) and Q.1902.3 (Bearer Independent Call Control) specify the protocol extensions that carry the certificate, the signature and the authentication result.

Two upcoming ITU standards now in their approval process will further enhance this new ITU toolset for CLI authentication using digital signatures. 

The upcoming Q.3070 specifies new requirements for issuing the certificates, together with the mechanism for sharing anchor information to ensure trust across national borders.

The associated governance framework and operational requirements will be provided by another upcoming ITU standard, E.1122, developed by ITU-T Study Group 2 (Operational aspects).