VoIPWiki reports that Skype has been cracked. A Chinese company has successfully reverse engineered the Skype protocol. According to the blog post, the company's CEO stated their software will not support Skype’s supernode technology. What this essentially means is that this 3rd party Skype clone will be a "free-loader" on the Skype network - they won't have to be a supernode responsible for helping to carry Skype traffic around the Net.

Further, as VoIPWiki points out, if Skype decides to add advertisements to their client, these can be bypassed with this 3rd party Skype client.

Skype has responded with this statement, “Skype is aware of the claim made by a small group of Chinese engineers that they have reverse engineered Skype software. We have no evidence to suggest that this is true. Even if it was possible to do this, the software code would lack the feature set and reliability of Skype which is enjoyed by over 100m users today. Moreover, no amount of reverse engineering would threaten Skype’s cryptographic security or integrity.”

Great spin by Skype, eh? If this hack is confirmed, then the $3 billion eBay spent on acquiring Skype makes the failed Vonage IPO look like a real winner in comparison.

Maybe if Skype does indeed get reverse engineered and their "secret sauce" is out there for anyone to use, Skype will decide to adopt the industry SIP standard so anyone can communicate with the Skype software. Nah. Not likely anytime soon.

Here's a screenshot of the hacked Skype client: