NSA offering 'billions' for Skype eavesdrop solution

Dean Pierce piercede at pdx.edu
Sat Feb 21 13:19:26 PST 2009


I thought that the current running theory is that Skype is an NSA 
operation due to all the spooky crypto being used that seems to have 
come from nowhere.

Assuming that is true, this recent "leak" would just be their attempt to 
convince more people (aka criminals) to use their service.

    - DEAN

Eugen Leitl wrote:
> That was also my first thought when I've read that.
> 
> ----- Forwarded message from Adam Fields <cryptography23094893 at aquick.org> -----
> 
> From: Adam Fields <cryptography23094893 at aquick.org>
> Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2009 20:19:21 -0500
> To: "Steven M. Bellovin" <smb at cs.columbia.edu>
> Cc: cryptography at metzdowd.com
> Subject: Re: NSA offering 'billions' for Skype eavesdrop solution
> User-Agent: Mutt/1.4.2.3i
> 
> On Fri, Feb 13, 2009 at 11:24:35AM -0500, Steven M. Bellovin wrote:
>> Counter Terror Expo: News of a possible viable business model for P2P
>> VoIP network Skype emerged today, at the Counter Terror Expo in London.
>> An industry source disclosed that America's supersecret National
>> Security Agency (NSA) is offering "billions" to any firm which can
>> offer reliable eavesdropping on Skype IM and voice traffic.
>>
>> ....
>>
>> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/12/nsa_offers_billions_for_skype_pwnage/
> 
> Of course, this could just be a smokescreen to try to convince people
> that they can't already do it.
> 
> The voice traffic may be hard to break, but the fact that every client
> can download my entire IM history when logging into a new machine kind
> of kills the "it's p2p so we can't track it" argument. Those messages
> are stored somewhere.





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