Skype's Server Upgrade Triggers Wiretapping Worries

Fears surfaced that Skype may be eavesdropping communications over its service.

The concern is that supernodes Microsoft is introducing to Skype could it easier to monitor calls, because they route the voice in addition to initiating communications parties.

"As was before the Microsoft acquisition, Skype cooperates with law enforcement as is legally required and technically feasible," Skype spokesperson Chaim Haas told TechNewsWorld.

However, the supernodes were being developed to Skype's being acquired by Microsoft, Haas said.

Skype developed the supernodes, which "can be located dedicated servers within secure datacenters, as of our ongoing commitment to continually improve the Skype user experience," said He Mark Gillett, head of Skype's product engineering and operations, an earlier statement.

The fear is that Skype may be monitoring voice and data communications.

Perhaps Microsoft's award of US patent 20110153809, which allows legal interception, has fueled those fears.

The technology describes how data associated a request to establish a communication is modified to cause it to be established a path that includes a recording agent. Such modification could adding, changing or deleting data.

However, " how sensitive to latency voice -- and even so video -- are, I find this to be implausible an engineering standpoint," Vikram Phatak, CEO of NSS Labs, told TechNewsWorld.

Latency is behind the spotty voice conversations people experience when using a Voice IP phone system. It's caused by delays the transmission of packets of data the network.

"Skype would lose users to poor quality very quickly" if data were being intercepted the supernodes," Phatak continued. "More likely, the handoff details are being shared law enforcement, which is different from what telephone carriers do today."

Further, communications can be -- "and in the of international communications are already -- monitored by government servers," Jim McGregor, founder and principal analyst of Tirias Research, told TechNewsWorld. "This is a reality and a result of the current state of world."

In Skype's supernode- hierarchical peer-to-peer architecture, some ordinary nodes were previously selected to double supernodes. The selection criteria appear to reachability and spare bandwidth. The supernodes maintain an overlay network among themselves and queries from ordinary nodes associated them.

However, Microsoft appears to have over and installed its own supernodes instead, following its purchase of Skype earlier this year. Changes in Skype's supernode setup reported in the Expertmiami blog in May.

Microsoft had trimmed the number of supernodes about 48,000 to 10,000, the blog pointed . Those 10,000 supernodes run Linux boxes using GRSecurity.

Skype's introduction of its own supernodes hasn't changed the underlying of its P2P architecture, in which supernodes simply allow users to find another, the company's Gillett said in to the Expertmiami report. The move to supernodes improves scalability, performance and availability of the Skype service, and calls do not through supernodes.


Adapted and abridged from: Technewsworld, July 24, 2012.