Tuesday, June 07, 2011

Reverse Engineered Skype! Where To Now?

Reverse Engineered Skype http://snapvoip.blogspot.com/
Many people have tried to reverse engineer Skype for a very long now. Those efforts started even before Skype was multi-billion product but there were no real reverse engineered Skype code.
In 2006 we wrote a post "A Silver Needle in Skype" which gave very good pointers how Skype worked. There were a lot of interest and we still see people reading the article and follow through to read a paper written by Philippe BIONDI and Fabrice DESCLAUX , a presentation for Blackhat Europe.

So when I read about that a Russian researcher (self description) has reverse engineered Skype, first thing that happened was my colleagues found me laughing. They asked me why, I told them "A Russian is looking for a job at Microsoft, and he has apparently reverse engineered Skype!". At that point the laughter reverberated in the room and I did not think much of it.
Then I read that the hacker, Efim Bushmanov, from Komi Republic, about 870 miles from Moscow, has actually posted the code on the net. I also read that Skype was not happy with it and has announced that the hacker or anyone else who uses the code will be persecuted. 
"We are taking all necessary steps to prevent or defeat nefarious attempts to subvert Skype's experience, Skype takes its users' safety and security seriously, and we work tirelessly to ensure each individual has the best possible experience," said spokesperson Sravanthi Agrawal.
So I set out to learn a bit about the saga. By then Google or the hacker himself have removed the blog from Google.
As for the rest, it was basically an empty balloon. Some code gathered from various places have been used but nothing is usable according to various sources.
So we can move along. And if you are really interested in reading how Skype works; follow on to "A Silver Needle in Skype"

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