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Detente in IM’s Cold War?

Skype Cracked

According to reports coming from Asia, the Skype protocol has been reverse engineered.  The work was done in China, which, notorious for its lack of intellectual property protection, probably guarantees that it can’t be thwarted by legal means.  The crackers are promising it will be available commercially by end of the month.

Interestingly enough, the hacked clients cannot act as supernodes. Effectively, they are freeloading on the PC super nodes out there.  Impact? Still unknown, but the speculation is that this could slow down the Skype network.

One wonders how Ebay will respond.  My opinion?  The smartest thing now would be to publish the specs for the protocol, and attempt to retain control through attractively priced marketing campaigns.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, July 13th, 2006 at 11:34 pm and is filed under Canada. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

12 Responses to “Skype Cracked”

  1. GigaOM : » Skype Cracked? Says:
    July 14th, 2006 at 12:07 am

    [...] In Skype Written By Om MalikCan Skype be reverse engineered? That has been the $2.6 billion dollar question Skype watchers often ask themselves. Alec Saunders points to this blog post by Charlie Paglee that claims that a bunch of chinese engineers have done exactly that - cracked Skype. [...]

  2. TechCrunch » Blog Archive » Skype Protocol Hacked Says:
    July 14th, 2006 at 4:21 am

    [...] I spoke to a Skype spokesperson this evening about the story. Her comment was “We have not had time to evaluate or confirm the story, and so do not yet have any comment.” Their instincts will tell them to take legal action (which may not have any effect since the company claiming to have done this is in China). But what they should do is use this as an opportunity to open up the protocol and allow third party developers to build Skype compatible applications (under Skype’s terms). Skype [...]

  3. an outsider's blathering Says:
    July 14th, 2006 at 5:14 am

    Skype reverse engineered ?…

    據傳：中國有一家公司利用反向工程解譯了一部份的Skype Protocol…

  4. TechCrunch Japanese アーカイブ » Skypeのプロトコル、ハックされる Says:
    July 14th, 2006 at 5:37 am

    [...] 今晩（米国時間7/13)にSkypeのスポークスパーソンにこの情報について聞いてみたが、「我々はこの情報を評価または裏付けを確認する時間がなかったため、何もコメントできない」ということだった。 Skype側の本能的な対応としては法的措置を講じるということだろう（このソフトは中国で作られたということなので何の効力も無いかもしれない）。しかし、本当にSkypeがすべきことはこれを良い機会として生かし、プロトコルを公開、Skypeと互換性のあるアプリケーションを（Skype側のコントロールの効く条件で）サードパーティーの開発者が作れるようにするということなのだろう。 [...]

  5. Digital Common Sense » Skype Entering a New Era Says:
    July 14th, 2006 at 11:57 am

    [...] Big news yesterday morning as all that began to change. I first heard from Jan that Skype Protocol Has Been Cracked. Later in the day Alec posted Skype Cracked and dropped me a note about the big news. Word is that a group in China has reverse engineered and cracked the Skype proprietary protocol. This morning there are ripples of conversation across many blogs and news sources.  Here’s a snip from Jan’s post. [...]

  6. Digital Common Sense » Skype Entering a New Era Says:
    July 14th, 2006 at 11:57 am

    [...] Big news yesterday morning as all that began to change. I first heard from Jan that Skype Protocol Has Been Cracked. Later in the day Alec posted Skype Cracked and dropped me a note about the big news. Word is that a group in China has reverse engineered and cracked the Skype proprietary protocol. This morning there are ripples of conversation across many blogs and news sources.  Here’s a snip from Jan’s post. [...]

  7. dready Says:
    July 14th, 2006 at 12:02 pm

    Skype Reverse-Engineered…

    VoIPWiki reports that the Skype protocol was successfully cracked by a company in China, who promised to release a demo version by end of August. This is amazing - not the news itself, but……

  8. Propos et Commentaires du Climenole » Skype “craqué”: rétro-ingénérie et sécurité Says:
    July 14th, 2006 at 2:26 pm

    [...] Citant Mike Arrington et Alec Saunders : « But what they [Skype] should do is use this as an opportunity to open up the protocol and allow third party developers to build Skype compatible applications (under Skype’s terms). » Tom Raftery se demande What are the chances? [...]

  9. VoIPWiki Blog » Skype’s Ostrich Strategy Says:
    July 16th, 2006 at 12:27 am

    [...] So really Skype’s spin in response to the engineering feat accomplished by a small team in China ignores the real issues. Skype’s Ostrich Strategy will give eBay time while they are trying to decide what to do next. [...]

  10. tropicaljantie | jan geirnaert Says:
    July 19th, 2006 at 1:42 pm

    * who funded this research ? who is working behind the screens ? why, how, where ? how long has it been going on ?

    * what is the relation (if any) between http://www.vozin.com / http://www.talqer.com / http://www.hanzen.cn and the alleded group of chinese skype engineers.

    * is there a relation to http://www.coobol.com (site offline but in the cache of google) or not ? And if so why has that not been disclosed.

    * what is the function of the http://www.voipwiki.com/blog. Smoke Screen or Marketing Tricking, creating hype before a launch of this Skype Clone ?

    * why and how long will this information be hidden from the public.

    * what else has been going on behind the smoke-screen ?

    * how lethal (if so) could that be for the original Skype.exe

    * what type of investigations are going and will be going on?

    * what are the consequence of being involved in such activities?

    * how will it affect the business-model and activities of Skype/Ebay?

    * how might this skype clone be marketed and under what domain-name ?

    * when will we see the final proof (under the form of an executable) surface ?

    * is there a relation to the earlier miniskype.exe ?

    This story will certainly have another long tail. I am convinced that the current «no comment» position of Skype shows that this matter is investigated and probably it’s not only Skype that is investigating this matter too. Another thing comes to mind is wether Ebay would have Skype monitoring the Skype-contacts-list,chats, conversations and related. It should not be so difficult to do a content-search and map out of some «who’s talking to who, when and about what» diagram…http://webtown.typepad.com/webtown/2006/07/skype_cracked_a.html

  11. tropicaljantie | jan geirnaert Says:
    October 8th, 2006 at 9:53 am

    From Russia with love… Did Russian Hackers overtake in effect Chinese Hackers in the race to reverse engineer the Skype.exe ? This time it’s not a hoax or an unfulfilled promise. Here is the QtSkype4.exe. see http://www.skype-watch.com or http://webtown.typepad.com/webtown/2006/10/from_russia_wit.html

  12. Fan of Don Lapre Says:
    November 10th, 2006 at 1:49 pm

    WOW!!!! News I appreciate the info on. So what does it mean for Skype?

    Fan of Don Lapre
    http://www.callvirgil.com
    webmaster@callvirgil.com

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