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:
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:



Technorati
Del.icio.us
Slashdot
Digg
twitter
* 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 www.vozin.com / www.talqer.com / www.hanzen.cn and the alleded group of chinese skype engineers.
* is there a relation to 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 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…
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 www.skype-watch.com or http://webtown.typepad.com/webtown/2006/10/from_russia_wit.html
30 reais no skyp tm geito???
where is that cracked skype or keygen for skype???????????????????????????????