skype claims they have no technical means to assist wiretapping

Marcos el Ruptor ruptor at cryptolib.com
Tue Jun 10 01:01:37 EDT 2008


> In any event, because of Skype's peer-to-peer architecture and  
> encryption techniques, Skype would not be able to comply with such  
> a request."

Well... Total BS and we all know it.

1. Skype servers transparently report the last few known IP addresses  
to any client requesting them. Just try running two or three Skype  
clients on different computers - they will all be receiving copies of  
your messages. While it may not work as an interception tool as it  
is, because every client will send back acknowledgements, but those  
can be switched off and such "ghost" clients can simply monitor all  
your conversations. It is especially easy to do if you control the  
server. It can make any client forward several copies of all its  
packets to other IP addresses.

If I have scared anyone, don't worry. Just type /debugchain in your  
chat window and you will see who is listening [no it won't cure your  
paranoia, I lied].

2. Skype can download and install updates automatically without the  
user's knowledge. Those can be tailor-made for the user with all  
kinds of additional "features" like sending all the logs back to the  
server.

3. Have I mentioned a few things in it that look and smell like  
server-controlled backdoors? They emit the same foul odour as the  
100000..00001 prime numbers provided by NIST for our elliptic curves,  
but presented in the standards in random-looking decimal form for  
extra subtlety...

Of course they *are* able to comply with such requests. They just  
either won't or just won't tell us.

Best regards,
Marcos el Ruptor
http://www.enrupt.com/ - Raising the bar [and disabling Skype  
SuperNode].

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