Skype Fear

December 21, 2005

By now you may have heard about how Skype uses a proprietary protocol and as such can be dangerous on your network as you aren't exactly sure what its doing. Recently a more pressing fear has popped onto the scene. Skype's developer program allows anyone to develop applications that piggyback on the Skype network. On the surface this is wonderful but when you peel the onion back one layer you see why this may not be so good.

Skype is an incredible program because it can punch though any firewall and send traffic. When you couple this feature with open APIs you have the ultimate virus/Trojan horse/worm propagation tool.

Is this a bad thing? Well it depends on your perspective. Skype could come up with a management tool that allows an enterprise to manage all of the Skype users on the network and thus ensure security and compliance with corporate policies. How many enterprises have Skype users and aren't even aware of it? If you can't measure the traffic how do you monitor it? Simple, you buy a $100/month site license from Skype to manage all Skype usage.

Imagine 5 million companies around the world paying $100/month.

Let that sink in for a minute.

Ahh now go back to the 2+ billion dollar price eBay paid for Skype. Does it make sense now?

Skype Fear

Communications and Technology Blog - Tehrani.com

Skype Fear