Apparatus and method to mitigate malicious calls in a wireless network

An electronic device to coordinate session initiation protocol (SIP) calls in a network, comprising:

• a processor and non-transitory machine-readable storage medium that provides instructions that, when executed by the processor, cause the electronic device to perform:
• forwarding a first SIP invite message from a caller party to a first callee party to set up a SIP session;
• starting a timer and forwarding one or more session progress messages to the caller party from the first callee party in response to the first SIP invite message, the timer to measure a time period until the electronic device receiving a provisional response acknowledgement (PRACK) message responsive to the one or more session progress messages forwarded to the caller party, wherein the electronic device comprises a third party node apart from the caller party and the first callee party, the third party node coordinating the SIP session;
• upon the caller party being unresponsive to the one or more session progress messages upon expiration of the timer,
• incrementing a counter once and forwarding an additional SIP invite message from the caller party to the first callee party to set up the SIP session,
• restarting the timer and forwarding additional one or more session progress messages from the first callee party to the caller party in response to the additional SIP invite message;
• upon the caller party remaining unresponsive to the additional one or more session progress messages when the timer expires,
• repeating the increment of the counter, the SIP invite message forwarding, the timer restarting, and the session progress messages forwarding,
• until the counter reaches a threshold;
• and
• dropping subsequent SIP messages from the caller party upon the counter reaching the threshold.