Speculation over back door in Skype
Editor's Note: Here are a couple thoughts I have about this. First, you should always assume that every major application out there mostly likely have some sort of remote access for governmental agencies to monitor criminals. This is not paranoia, but if the application has encryption then you know the NSA has keys if it is distributed in the U.S. Second, you really should not be doing anything illegal but you happen to find yourself astray of the law then you should not be using any of the high technology to conduct yourself in these ways. I am in no way supporting any illegal acts, I am just giving helpful advice to my audience. Lastly, this does not surprise me being the amount of users they have, it would be quite odd of our defense agencies could not monitor this type of communication.
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.
This has been confirmed to heise online by a number of the parties present at the meeting. Skype declined to give a detailed response to specific enquiries from heise online as to whether Skype contains a back door and whether specific clients allowing access to a system or a specific key for decrypting data streams exist. The response from the eBay subsidiary's press spokesman was brief, "Skype does not comment on media speculation. Skype has no further comment at this time." There have been rumours of the existence of a special listening device which Skype is reported to offer for sale to interested states.
There has long been speculation that Skype may contain a back door. Because the vendor has not revealed details of its proprietary Skype protocol or of how the client works, questions as to what else Skype is capable of and what risks are involved in deploying it in an enterprise environment remain open.
Last week, Austrian broadcaster ORF, citing minutes from the meeting, reported that the Austrian police are able to listen in on Skype connections. Interior ministry spokesman Rudolf Gollia declined to provide heise online with a comment on the matter. He did, however, offer general comments on the meeting, which were, however, contradicted by other attendees.
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