July 19th 2006
Skype Protocol has been cracked
Last year Charlie Paglee predicted in his blog that the Skype protocol will be reverse engineered by August 2006 and application code will be offered for license. Now it’s cracked!
Charlie Paglee now reports that the Skype Protocol has been cracked.
But why crack such a nice software, you might ask. “It is free to use!” Is it? Here’s an excerpt from Skype’s licence agreement:
“4.1 Utilization of Your computer. You hereby acknowledge that the Skype Software may utilize the processor and bandwidth of the computer (or other applicable device) You are utilizing, for the limited purpose of facilitating the communication between Skype Software users.”
What this practically means, is that Skype may use your computer as a supernode (Skype’s Super Node technology), which means that it may steal alot of your bandwitdth. So, you might say it’s free, but no it’s not. This is why Skype wants everybody to create “free” accounts. 
Lots of software supporting the Skype network will probably appear now as the code is broken. The picture (taken from Paglee’s blog) shows a client compatible with the Skype protocol. This software will not support Skype’s supernode technology. This means that soon will skype users have a client that doesn’t hijack their computer. This will of course have a negative impact on the Skype network, if everyone uses this client.
Listen to this podcast
Tags: Skype, VoIP, protocol, IM, technology Trackback URI
freaker79