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Skype Is Working To Defeat the Reverse Engineering
ndogg writes "Michael Larabel of Phoronix was emailed a response to the reverse engineering of the Skype protocol from the VP of Skype's PR company, who said that the reverse engineering was done for the use of spam/phishing, and that it's an infringement of their IP, and that they are working to defeat it."
Perhaps if Skype's Linux client had been better maintained and offered a feature parity to the Windows and Mac OS X clients, there wouldn't be people spending time on reverse-engineering the protocol so that they could write their own client.
Or, maybe, there are just a lot of Linux users who hate proprietary software, and don't trust Skype. Skype uses a lot of anti-debugging techniques. What are they hiding?
Openly admitting your security is based on obscurity sounds a little strange IMHO.
Instead of using a secret protocol, plainly give out the necessary certifiates only via email and kill them off after abuse. Especially since everybody can use the Skpe API to spam if he wants.
...or we may end up with a lot of halfassed clients.
Sort of like the RIAA's attorneys.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
If a spammer or phisher would reverse engineer a protocol, it's very unlikely they would publish about it, since that would help their competition. It is possible that spammers or phishers will use the results of reverse engineering of course, but if your protection against malicious activities consists of a secret protocol then you should consider implementing real security instead of blaming the reverse engineering.
In any case it's clear that Skype doesn't want third party clients to interoperate with their own, so instead of getting into a cat and mouse game it would be more useful to improve existing open source VOIP clients so Skype can be replaced altogether.
And you don't want to have to compete on SERVICE, only features. Much harder to compete if the protocol is open, and consumers have actual CHOICE. In the end openness could make for a better product, but only if Skype is up to the task.
Why do I keep getting the same inane message from "Natalia", posted from various temporary accounts? I've blocked every account it's come from; I'm sure many have. Is Skype really too slow to get the hint? Jesus, make the spammers work a bit to change a word here and there! It's shocking to me how little Skype cares about spam and phishing in their network. My point is, you can do all the spam and phishing you want with the native client, because Skype apparently does nothing to stop even the clumsiest of spammers who know how to solve a capcha. So their alleged interest to protect their users was conveniently discovered when the possibility of competition suddenly arose.
So Skype's PR people are morons. No surprise there, PR people are usually the bullshitters who couldn't make it as politicians.
I'm British, I have friends all over the country and no-one has ever used or heard this term being used as you describe it. I think you've either mixed Britain up with a very small regional part of Britain or have the wrong word.
You are correct that it's legal, but that doesn't mean that Skype is under any obligation to make it easy.
I use Mac and Linux, my in-laws and some of my contacts use Windows.
Give me a client that reliably (well, as reliably as Skype, anyway) works on these platforms (iOS would also be nice, as both I and the missus use that as well) and is simple enough to install and start for my in-laws, my parents, and the others I want to contact.
Google chat should work, but is seriously confusing to beginners, and they want a standalone client anyway.
When you can point me to that VOIP client, then I'll consider dumping Skype.
Until the, Skype is king.
I suspect that it depends on where they plan to slot Skype into their list of product offerings.
If it becomes part of some 'enterprise' offering, playing cat-and-mouse would likely not be a sensible strategy. Corporate/institutional customers hate petty version churn of the sort needed to keep constantly breaking 3rd parties and they have a fairly low likelihood of going with 'unofficial' software. They may well keep globbing on new features(as with Office document formats, Sharepoint tie-ins, etc.); but corporate customers are conservative enough that even the perception that 3rd party clients are not feature-complete and 100% compatible usually keeps them well away, and the few exceptions are likely to either be impecunious contrarians or competing titans(eg. IBM) large enough to make an issue of it if you play dirty.
If it becomes a "Live" consumer offering, playing cat-and-mouse is at least an option, since the consumer market has largely learned to suck up their auto-updates when told(and isn't behind a firewall that blocks them, and doesn't need to open a ticket with IT to install them...) It still isn't totally clear what their motivation would be(since they would still control the skype-out gateways, where the money is, and having third parties voluntarily make your network more popular among markets you don't feel like serving doesn't seem like an obviously bad thing(though they might keep the banhammer hovering, just to ensure that people license the rights to embed skype in wifi VOIP phones and whatnot from them, rather than go 3rd party...)
If it becomes a consumer-electronics thing, affiliated with xbox or Windows Phone, it seems to be some sort of ontological obligation to lock it down as hard as possible, just on principle, just because that is how they roll in console-land.
Riiiight, and if the protocol was completely open like SIP we wouldn't have the problems with Robodialers like SIP because? The problem with mass communication protocols is there are plenty of assholes in legal nowherelands that can and WILL use anything and everything they can get their slimy hands on to hack, harass, spam, and generally act like giant fucking douchebags without regards to anyone but themselves.
One should never forget the universal truth that is Gabriel's Greater Internet Theory and then add in the ones that would be acting like douchebags because they could make money doing so ON TOP of the ones just being dicks for the sheer fun of being a fucktwit? It would be a damned mess and you KNOW this. The reason why everyone uses Skype is that it "just works" without having to worry about your video chat window suddenly popping up with someone's junk in it or getting called every two seconds from some automated voice trying to sell you herbal Viagra. While I think FOSS is fine in some places, in others it would be a BAD idea, and I'd say this here is one of the latter.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I believe the problem they face is that if the client protocol is understood, any monkey can implement that client protocol in a program which dials millions of Skype users per second offering to sell them half-off auto warranties or telling them about that $15,000,000 they need to smuggle out of Zambia, effectively destroying the trust in Skype, potentially resulting in an exodus of customers. Their perspective is not entirely unjustified.
However, they don't appear to be spending much time working on a mitigation technique for when some jerk-off in the middle of nowhere (i.e. Nigeria) manages to achieve the same goal - because no legal threat will work on those fuckers.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
... won't they be obligated to license the protocol to third parties to avoid the wrath of anti-trust regulators (especially in the EU)?