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Technology/
E-reader News Edition
Skype’s Innermost Security Layers Claimed To Be Reverse- Engineered
Robin Wauters (TechCrunch) Submitted at 7/8/2010 9:17:39 AM
Internet telephony giant Skype may well have a significant security issue on its hands, TechCrunch has learned. Someone claims to have reverse -engineered the proprietary encryption protocols Skype has put in place to prevent developers from building their own Skype desktop clients or Web-based services based on the company’s in-house technology. If this checks out, this basically means the walls of Skype’s pretty garden have been abruptly hauled down, something the company was hoping to do on its own, albeit slowly, by rolling out public APIs in the future.
The full extent of what a possible breach of this system could entail is unclear, but worst case, malicious hackers could gain insights from the reverse- engineered procedures and learn how to exploit it. To be clear: there’s no reason for panic until the implications become obvious.
Either way, Skype posits there is no security issue at all, but the jury is still out on that.
Let’s start with the beginning. The person who claims to have pulled of this feat – he writes under the moniker Sean O’Neil, which is almost certainly a pseudonym – which has apparently been tried for the
SKYPE’S page 22
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