Skype buy heralds wiretaps, Linux death

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And will the buy be the death of cross-platform video conferencing?

Microsoft plans to buy online phone service Skype for US$8.5 billion, but what are the security implications?

Skype buy heralds wiretaps, Linux death

For those not familiar with Skype, it's an interesting sort of beast. Loosely speaking, it's an internet telephone company without much of a telephone company. Much of its operation is peer-to-peer, so that much of its bandwidth and infrastructure - not unreasonably - is provided directly by the users of the service.

One uncertainty - indeed, to some, it's a controversy - about Skype's proprietary software is whether it includes any sort of 'lawful interception' system.

Most countries require landline and mobile phone operators to provide a vehicle by which duly-authorised law enforcement agents can intercept calls on their networks.

Indeed, phone carriers spend a lot of money maintaining lawful interception systems, something which is as useful to law enforcement as it is worrying to privacy.

But since most Skype calls are peer-to-peer, and encrypted end-to-end, Skype isn't a traditional phone carrier.

Either it doesn't have a lawful interception capability or it must contain some sort of network-independent backdoor which could be considered a serious security risk.

So what's likely to happen from a software and a security point of view? Here are my guesses:

  • The Linux version of the Skype software will wither and die.
  • The OS X version of the Skype software may wither and might die.
  • Microsoft will add some sort of lawful interception system into the Skype software, assuming there isn't one already. But they'll be honest about doing so.
  • You'll need to get a Windows LiveID to create a Skype account.
  • Skype will come under greater scrutiny from cybercrooks keen to find saleable vulnerabilities.
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