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Microsoft's Skype Is Most Used Messaging Service For Cyber Criminals, Study Finds (securityledger.com)
chicksdaddy quotes a report from The Security Ledger: Cyber criminals lurk in the dark recesses of the internet, striking at random and then disappearing into the virtual ether. But when they want to talk shop with their colleagues, they turn to Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft and its Skype communications tools, according to an analysis by the firm Flashpoint. Mentions of different platforms were used as a proxy for gauging interest in and use of these messaging services. Flashpoint analysts looked, especially, for invitations to continue conversation outside of cyber criminal marketplaces, like references to ICQ accounts or other platforms. The survey results show that, out of a population of around 80 instant messenger platforms and protocols, a short list of just five platforms accounts for between 80% and 90% of all mentions within the cyber underground. Of those, Microsoft's Skype was the chat king. It ranked among the top five platforms across all language groups. That, despite the platform's lack of end-to-end encryption or forward secrecy features and evidence, courtesy of NSA hacker Edward Snowden, that U.S. spies may have snooped on Skype video calls in recent years, The Security Ledger reports. The conclusion: while security is a priority amongst thieves, it isn't the sole concern that cyber criminals and their associates have. In fact, sophisticated hacking communities like those in Russia to continue to rely on legacy platforms like ICQ when provably more secure alternatives exist. The reason? Business. "These cyber criminals have a lot of different options that they're juggling and a lot of factors that weigh on their options," said Leroy Terrelonge III, the Director of Middle East and Africa Research at Flashpoint. "We might suspect that cyber criminals use the most secure means of communication all the time, that's not what our research showed."
That never happened before Microsoft bought it.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
....I thought it was IRC. My whole life is a lie
I guess I don't really see the significance here.
Did it occur to the surveyors that people might use the term generically for any sort of voice / face based communication. Just like people talk about "googling" instead of searching for something - or say "the wifi" when they mean "the internet"?
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Where are the calls to ban Skype because of the potential for criminal use ?
Where are the calls to put in backdoors so Law Enforcement can have access to everything ?
The former makes no more sense than banning encryption and the latter is laughable because: Microsoft already backdoors it ( no real secret that ).
... that ICQ is still a thing...
Once a krook, alwayz a krook!
Study Finds
Study also Finds
Is it just me or do criminals use the same tools as most other people? I'm not talking about people who know what's what, I just mean people.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
anyone heard of “wire” an app by the skype inventor appwhich encrypts conversations https://wire.com/en/
I got to the chocolate box before you, that's why the hard ones have teeth marks.
by Cyber Criminals, Study Finds
In other news, Los Angeles streets are the streets that Los Angeles criminals prefer to drive on.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
After all, it is owned by an organization that has been found guilty of criminal behavior in a court of law.
That they know of.
how is this relevant ?
I also suspect that given how the NSA is soley focused on American national security, that if you're not doing anything to endanger that, the NSA isn't interested in you. And most crimes don't effect American national security.
The NSA amd CIA need to infiltrate this organization. The when they hve planted their own keys into all microsoft products the world will be safe.
Skype is less secure since Microsoft bought it because they own all the super nodes now.
Next; the four-door car is the most-used vehicle for thieves. News at eleven.
I imagine Skype has a lot of hangers-on because everyone else is using it. This is just a consequence of the winner-takes-all rules for cyber-space.
(they got rid of the p2p super nodes and replaced them with microsoft servers)
That's not a nice way to accuse my little sister of doing something weird on skype. I'm sure she's a nice person. I mean every times I get a ransom ware popup, she kindly told me to pay in full.
I do wonder where she got her car though...
Politicians use Skype too
whether those using these services are thinking about security there is a lot to talking in a crowded area it can drown out unless they are already known and its much less suspicious.
Skype used to be end-to-end encrypted and it caused police a lot of problems. Maybe criminal groups are just slow to move to a new service since everyone got established on Skype when it was secure, and the removal of encryption isn't exactly something Microsoft has put in a press release.
ban skype and all platforms it runs on, just like banning laptops and water bottles on planes.
Seriously though, only a millenial would be that dumb. This same demographic probably meets people on Facebook and texts with WhatsApp too. Do humans have so little problems anymore that rather than being a fearless young person, they choose not to care about privacy instead? That's my theory anyway.
With unlimited voice and text in cell phones for domestic calls and dirt cheap land lines, it boggles my mind our company decided to "save" costs by moving to skype. Our company had been using webex with reasonable levels of robustness, reliability and quality for quite some time. Then some ex Microsoft C?O showed up and suddenly they decided to "cut costs" by moving from Webex to Skype for all our teleconferencing needs.
There are so many problems, even people who swear by Microsoft and are fans of that company are put off by it. Randomly drops calls, suddenly drops the microphone, can not find the microphone ... Even the very first "intro to skype" was a disaster, it died half way through... We are falling back to the free Google hangouts,.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
That still exists?
Pretty sure it's IRC :D
Well, clearly Microsoft must do something to censor the content on Skype. After all, we can't allow criminals to make undesirable messages and calls on Skype. /sarcasm
I keep hearing crap like this lately, and with stories like this clickbait, I'm going to continue hearing it. Sadly, you can't explain to these sheep why implementing mass-censorship of communications media is a bad thing for society, or why even if it was a good thing (it's not but for the sake of argument), it's near impossible to implement without an AI. In addition don't bother trying to explaining to them why they won't be the person deciding what gets blocked vs. what gets allowed. After all, they know they will be, or if not, the person who is will always agree with them.
Last time I used it was in 1997. It's still around? And in use?? By Russians???
*millennial