Eric S Johnson: > Dear LibTechers, > > > > When Microsoft applied in 2009 for a patent on "recording agents" to surveil > peer-to-peer communications, it was assumed they were talking about > something they might implement in Skype. >
Perhaps. > Skype in 2010 started rearchitecting its use of supernodes "to improve > reliability." > It is a matter of total control as much as anything, I think. > MS stated in 2012 that the re-engineering is "to improve the user > experience." > > The recent report in the Russian media that MS can trigger individual users' > Skype instances to establish session-specific encryption key exchange not > with "the other end" but with intermediate nodes (thus making possible > inline surveillance of Skype communications-presumably VoIP, since MS > already stores Skype IM sessions "for 30 days")-dovetails nicely with > suspicions that MS is making (or has made) Skype lawful-intercept-friendly. > I believe that Skype has been interception friendly in various meanings of the phrase for quite some time, if not always. > > > But wouldn't the above evolution require changes in the Skype client, too? > Does anyone know of any work to identify whether it's possible to say "if > you keep your Skype client below version 4.4 [for instance], any newer > capability to remotely trigger individually-targeted > surveillance-by-intermediate-node isn't (as) there"? > No, I don't think so. As a side note, older versions of Skype have the added benefit of being targets for attack that will allow someone to use it as a malware vector. All the best, Jacob -- Too many emails? Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at [email protected] or changing your settings at https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech
