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Eavesdropping On Google Voice and Skype
Simmons writes with news of research that demonstrated vulnerabilities in Skype and Google Voice that would have allowed attackers to eavesdrop on calls or place unauthorized calls of their own. "The attacks on Google Voice and Skype use different techniques, but essentially they both work because neither service requires a password to access its voicemail system. For the Skype attack to work, the victim would have to be tricked into visiting a malicious Web site within 30 minutes of being logged into Skype. In the Google Voice attack (PDF), the hacker would first need to know the victim's phone number, but Secure Science has devised a way to figure this out using Google Voice's Short Message Service (SMS). Google patched the bugs that enabled Secure Science's attack last week and has now added a password requirement to its voicemail system, the company said in a statement. ... The Skype flaws have not yet been patched, according to James." Reader EricTheGreen contributes related news that eBay may sell Skype back to its original founders.
I've never had a chance to comment so close to the start of an article before! Way to go Easter candy, making everyone slow and laaaazy.
What if people are talking dirty, or exchanging videos on there. Ew, people can watch or listen. Gross. These things should be more secure.
A phone company's monopoly in a particular area is often unavoidable due to the cost of laying physical cables, a monopoly of skype is just completely ridiculous and inexcusable.
Who.
The fuck.
Cares?
Seriously... this whole phobia of monopolies that the majority of Slashdot seems to suffer from is getting old. I don't know if it's just the cool thing for kids to talk about these days or what... but just because a company is a monopoly, doesn't mean the company is bad. And on top of that, you folks seem to way over-simplify what it means to actually be a monopoly.
Take Skype, for instance. How the hell can you call Skype a monopoly? Have you ever once heard of AIM, Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, Google Talk, Google Voice, ICQ, Gizmo Project, etc, etc? All of them are instant messengers, most of them have free voice calling, most of them have free video calling, and a couple of them offer phone numbers and international calling... just like Skype. Skype is, in no way, a monopoly, and you need to remember that whenever you think about posting in a Slashdot thread.
But even if Skype WAS a monopoly (it isn't... really), who cares? Do they cause harm to their customers because of it? No. They actually have pretty much the best prices for international calling of all long distance phone providers... which is why they're so popular. Monopolies aren't bad because they're monopolies... monopolies are only bad when they use this 100%-market-share as leverage to get their consumers to spend all their money on these products/services that have become commonplace and almost required to live a normal life. As far as I can tell (taking the general Slashdot consensus out of consideration), the only monopoly currently in existance is Apple. Sorry fanboys, but just think about it. Apple's shit only works with Apple's shit. If you want to use OS X you have to own a Mac, if you want to use your iPhone you have to activate it through iTunes, if you want to put music on your iPod you have to use iTunes (if you want to follow Apple's EULA anyhow), if you want to use iTunes then you can only put music on an iPod. The list goes on and on. And how does Apple leverage this 100%-market-share on Apple products? They charge $3000 for a computer that I can buy from a different vendor for fucking $1200, just because it's made of brushed aluminum and has a picture of a fruit on the lid. (And now to the part that's gonna get me modded Troll.... wait for it....) Does Microsoft pull all this shit? No. They aren't a monopoly. I'm really sorry Slashdot, but Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly on the PC, partly because consumer-level Linux is in the same market, partly because Apple is in their own sub-market within this market, if you will. Microsoft isn't making deals with hardware manufacturers that make it so their OS only works with specific computers. Sure, they're a huge corporation, that produces the most popular OS in the world... but are they the only company that produces operating systems? No. Are they intentionally hurting the consumer for their own gain? They aren't. (there, have at it mods)