MGCP and/or H.248 (MEGACO) is not restricted/controlled on the LAN and/or protected on the WAN using encryption OR MGCP and/or H.248 (MEGACO) packets are not authenticated or filtered by source IP address.

Media Gateway Control Protocol (MGCP) is a protocol that is used between Media Gateway Controllers (MGCs), Media Gateways (MGs), and other MGs to exchange sensitive gateway status and zone information as well as establish sessions via the MG. MGCP is a clear text human readable protocol. This information is critical in the setup and completion of voice calls from one VoIP zone to another VoIP zone or more typically from a VoIP zone to a TDM zone. If this information is poisoned or if collected and used by an unauthorized unscrupulous individual, the effects to the VoIP environment could be detrimental. Denial-of-service or fraudulent system use are only two of the potential compromises. As such, MGCP messages must be protected from eavesdropping, man in the middle, and replay attacks. To protect MGCP, Request for Comment (RFC) 2705 which defines MGCP outlines and recommends the use of IPsec for encryption and authentication between gateways. This recommendation primarily applies to the use of MGCP across unprotected WANs like the Internet. This extends to use on NIPRNet as well. A follow-on protocol defined jointly by the IETF in RFC 3435 and the ITU-T in Recommendation H.248.1 is MEGACO/H.248 which provides the same general functionality as MGCP. RFC 3435 also requires that H.248 packets be authenticated and/or encrypted using IPsec. Unfortunately there is not widespread support by MGCs and MGs for IPsec protection and therefore we must rely on external IPsec VPNs when traversing the WAN. When confined within the LAN, we can protect MGCP in a number of ways without IPsec.