Spam detection in voice-over-IP calls through semi-supervised clustering

In this paper, we present an approach for detection of spam calls over IP telephony called SPIT in VoIP systems. SPIT detection is different from spam detection in email in that the process has to be soft real-time, fewer features are available for examination due to the difficulty of mining voice traffic at runtime, and similarity in signaling traffic between legitimate and malicious callers. Our approach differs from existing work in its adaptability to new environments without the need for laborious and error-prone manual parameter configuration. We use clustering based on the call parameters, using optional user feedback for some calls, which they mark as SPIT or non-SPIT. We improve on a popular algorithm for semi-supervised learning, called MPCK-Means, to make it scalable to a large number of calls and operate at runtime. Our evaluation on captured call traces shows a fifteen fold reduction in computation time, with improvement in detection accuracy.