Possible Backdoor in Skype

According to Heise high ranked members of the Austrian Ministry of the Interior revealed that scanning Skype is not difficult. When asked about the matter, the Ebay daughter did not comment. A member of Skype's public relations department is cited: "Skype does not comment on media speculations. Skype does not have any other comments at the moment.”

The Austrian Ministry of the Interior is said to have demanded that devices for monitoring the data traffic, which would send the gathered information to the governmental department, had to be installed. Furthermore monitored customers should be provided with static IP addresses only, in order to make surveillance easier.

If the ISP should oppose the demand, a surveillance regulation should be passed, which would dictate the ETSI surveillance standard ES 201 671 version 3.1.1. Furthermore officers were said to have admit that only ingenuous criminals could be caught that way, since organized criminals would use better codification.

Rumors say that two big providers already installed the Network Bridges for the governmental department. Both companies denied those reports. Surveillances would only be arranged on court order for individual cases.