More Skype Back Door Speculation

An anonymous reader writes "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."

Comments

Re:Decode the protocol?

[mrogers]

The code is heavily obfuscated to prevent reverse engineering (encrypted code, checksums, debugger detection, all kinds of fun).

Re:Open source VoIP alternatives?

[davester666]

Oh, for the good old days, when you actually needed a warrant.

Now they just get your packets to route across a border, and then can listen in at will [if you're not in the US].

If you do happen to live in the US, they just declare [as in, speak into the air] "This person is obviously an terrorist, an enemy combatant not in an official uniform, therefore, I can listen to all their phone calls.". Then the phone and/or VOIP company is required to permit the wiretap. This used to require a photocopied letter, but those were just too much of a hassle to carry around...