Skype Backdoor

[i]According to reports, there may be a back door built into Skype, which allows connections to be bugged. The company has declined to expressly deny the allegations. At a meeting with representatives of ISPs and the Austrian regulator on lawful interception of IP based services held on 25th June, high-ranking officials at the Austrian interior ministry revealed that it is not a problem for them to listen in on Skype conversations.

This has been confirmed to heise online by a number of the parties present at the meeting. Skype declined to give a detailed response to specific enquiries from heise online as to whether Skype contains a back door and whether specific clients allowing access to a system or a specific key for decrypting data streams exist. The response from the eBay subsidiary’s press spokesman was brief, “Skype does not comment on media speculation. Skype has no further comment at this time.” There have been rumours of the existence of a special listening device which Skype is reported to offer for sale to interested states.

There has long been speculation that Skype may contain a back door. Because the vendor has not revealed details of its proprietary Skype protocol or of how the client works, questions as to what else Skype is capable of and what risks are involved in deploying it in an enterprise environment remain open.

Last week, Austrian broadcaster ORF, citing minutes from the meeting, reported that the Austrian police are able to listen in on Skype connections. Interior ministry spokesman Rudolf Gollia declined to provide heise online with a comment on the matter. He did, however, offer general comments on the meeting, which were, however, contradicted by other attendees. [/i]

Not surprising. Not cool though.

Down with closed source!

[quote]lixy wrote:
Not surprising. Not cool though.

Down with closed source![/quote]

Seconded.

Good post lixy. Thanks.

Not surprising at all.
Someone who works with computers was at my house last night and one thing that he does is find holes in security software/systems for companies (banks, businesses, private networks etc.) and then fixes them.

He was telling us how he recently found a backdoor in a piece of security software that he had loaded onto his cell phone that essentially allows someone to access everything on a phone loaded with that software (call logs, stored numbers, text, etc. He promptly removed the software.
Too bad he wouldn’t say what software it was.