Skype Users Beware: Big Brother May Be Listening
Has the National Security Agency already cracked the program that terrorists consider safe?
But maybe, just maybe, the NSA and Skype are already in bed together, and the billion-dollar offer being made is just another way to keep the journalists, whistleblowers, and terrorists talking. What better place for the spreading of disinformation than the Counter Terror Expo — in London, no less. Dr. Moshe Yudkowsky believes this may in fact be the case. A physicist and speech technology expert who writes for emerging technology giant O’Reilly.com, Yudkowsky cites a bizarre case in Hungary in March 2007 to make his point.
That’s when a then-Hillary Clinton presidential campaign staffer, who recently left a job at the NSA, was arrested on espionage charges. Hungarian police had examined the staffer’s briefcase and found a transcript between the head of the Hungarian police, a man named Laszlo Bene, and the head of the police in Brussels, Belgium, a man named Stefan Feller. The Clinton staffer confessed to eavesdropping, which in turn produced the transcript of the conversation between the two police chiefs.
But the eavesdropping process, Yudkowsky explains, was far from what you might expect. There was no “bug” hidden in a vase under a mantelpiece or stuck to a lamp. Instead, the “bug” was in the form of the already existing microphone on the Hungarian police chief’s computer. The police chief — like journalists, whistleblowers, and terrorists — also used Skype to communicate. Yudkowsky explains:
Sources in the Hungarian police department revealed that the background traffic associated with running Skype on a personal computer provides an ideal method to hide the transfer of data from an individual’s computer without the owner’s knowledge or consent. Skype can “turn on a computer’s microphone on command,” said a highly placed source, “and no one will be the wiser.” The data are routed to servers that use speech recognition to look for suspicious phrases. Furthermore, algorithms can use the sound of keyclicks to guess at which keys are being struck, which allows anyone listening to determine not only what is being said but what is being typed.
Immediately after the bust, the European Commission opened an investigation. Alain Brun, the head of data protection at the Commission, told reporters, “The suspect [i.e., Clinton staffer] worked at the U.S. National Security Agency, where he learned of an agreement between Skype and Echelon to enable a ’spy’ mode on all Skype products.” What has yet to be explained is: What did Hillary Clinton’s staffer need this information for? And where has this former Clinton staffer gone?
Dr. Yudkowsky found a source at Dean Witter who believes the Skype-NSA-as-bedfellows idea could explain how Skype has been making money. After all, its users are able to use it for free. “Outside payments by government agencies would explain how Skype can hope to make a profit,” the source told Dr. Yudkowsky. “Otherwise the purchase of Skype by eBay [in 2005] still doesn’t make sense.”
Maybe the NSA has spent its “billions” already, after all.
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Annie Jacobsen writes about aviation and intelligence. She blogs at TheAviationNation.com and is working on a new book for Little Brown and Company.
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34 Comments
1. Typewriter_King:A few years ago, I was sending emails through “the great firewall” of a Southeast Asian country by typing messages in Microsoft Paint, and sending JPEG attachments. Because text wasn’t being indexed, I figured I could send messages freely, so long as I wasn’t under investigation.
Months later, spammers caught on to the same tactic of attaching their sales pitch in an image, and surrounding it with text that would get around filters. All the spam-filtering interests then collaborated to counter this new spam breakthrough.
I’m not saying authoritarian Asian governments organized the spam surge to outsource the problem-solving to Western software designers, but it probably would have been a whole lot easier than solving the problem themselves.
Feb 20, 2009 - 1:14 am 2. Osama:Thanks for the heads up.
Osama B. Laden
Feb 20, 2009 - 1:24 am 3. overseas:I don’t know where you get your information, Ms. Jacobsen, but the Chinese gov’t has been listening in on Skype conversations for a long time. They have called in people and played recordings of their Skype calls for them. Also, you certainly don’t have to pay $59 for a headset! You just need a headset with a mike and headphones.
Feb 20, 2009 - 3:00 am 4. Paulo:I am sure there are ways to crack Skype conversations and it shouldn’t be that difficult given one has the means and the intention.
Now the statement about Skype’s profit is extremely simplistic. After all, “Skype Out”, the service that allows one to call from the computer to landlines/cell phones around the world, offers very competitive rates.
I, for example, have given up my landline phone and use only skype for international calls since 2004. There’s certainly money to be made in this market.
Feb 20, 2009 - 4:31 am 5. RW:With all due respect, we don’t need this in the public domain.
Feb 20, 2009 - 5:31 am 6. David Gillies:$59 bucks for a headset? From whom? Bulgari?
I assume that if the NSA or a comparable organisation really wants to know my business then they will. The trick is to make the cost of accessing it more than its value.
Feb 20, 2009 - 7:52 am 7. Jeff Shultz:Annie,
Not only should you have not been told how – you should not have been told that it was even possible (regarding Wordpress).
Thanks for enabling the terrorists.
Feb 20, 2009 - 8:06 am 8. Wally Lind:I second Osama’s post, Jeez! It’s very nice to know that journalists an terrorist have common interests, helps me understand what’s going on. What a couple of pinheads! I’d hope they hit your town first, but of course they won’t, they never go after the guilty, just the innocent.
Feb 20, 2009 - 8:28 am 9. Self-hating Boomer:I agree with Paulo. Skype uses a proprietary codec, but there’s no explicit encryption, AFAIK. Cracking should be straightforward for reasonably motivated and funded cracker. This sounds like Area 51 stuff.
Feb 20, 2009 - 8:59 am 10. Mike T:Skype users have more to worry about from laws like this which will put a black box onto their own home network in the name of “keeping the Childrentm safe.”
Feb 20, 2009 - 9:09 am 11. Mike T:Jeff,
Feb 20, 2009 - 9:20 am 12. Self-hating Boomer:BTW, where is it written that people have a right to expect privacy on the internet? The internet, by its nature, is a public data superhighway. It was never designed to be secure, it isn’t secure, and if you want security, you’d better set up encryption yourself. Part of the problem here is that people have an unfounded and unrealistic expectation that when they use the net, it’s just between usses. It ain’t, by the very nature of the net.
I use Skype, but I don’t expect it to be private. My conversations are probably very boring to anyone listening, but I don’t assume that no one can listen.
Feb 20, 2009 - 9:40 am 13. Ms. Attitude:ZZZZZZZZ….that’s the sound that would come from the person listening in on me. I work for the government everything I do at work can be listened to or recorded. As a system administrator I can connect to coworkers computers and see what they are doing, and someone else can watch me. Tip: don’t do anything you shouldn’t be doing and you’ll be ok.
But just like everything else – what can be used to protect us can also be used to harm us.
Feb 20, 2009 - 9:56 am 14. Mike T:By that logic, you should have no problem with the police recording and analyzing everything you ever do, including following you around, in public because walking around public has even less of a basic expectation of privacy than Internet use.
Feb 20, 2009 - 9:58 am 15. Mike T:Tell that to all of the innocent people who have been put in prison by prosecutors more concerned with their career than prosecuting a fact-driven case.
Feb 20, 2009 - 9:59 am 16. Self-hating Boomer:Mike, like it or not, that’s the way it’s always been. That’s why the Fourth Amendment doesn’t apply to your car. You knew that, right?
Feb 20, 2009 - 10:17 am 17. Mudpie:Mike T
By that logic, you should have no problem with the police recording and analyzing everything you ever do, including following you around, in public because walking around public has even less of a basic expectation of privacy than Internet use
I know two people that the police follow everywhere they
Feb 20, 2009 - 10:28 am 18. Delia:go and I thank God they do. They are very dangerous.
I’ve never used Skype so I have no basis with which to offer any opinion one way or the other. I don’t use chat programs either for that matter because they are loaded with annoying crap.
2. Osama:
“Thanks for the heads up.
Osama B. Laden”
↑LMAO!
Feb 20, 2009 - 12:01 pm 19. Mike T:The 4th amendment does apply to your car. If I am sitting at a gas station, filling up my tank, a cop can’t come by and open up my trunk just because he feels like taking a peak.
Feb 20, 2009 - 1:51 pm 20. Cindy Sue Causey:Posts like this remind me yet again how many newcomers we have to the Net in the last few years.. In the good ol’ days, we were constantly being warned to keep our webcams covered if not unplugged when not in our controlled use.. The reason being that it was not that difficult for someone who had gained illegal access to one’s computer to turn a cam on as well to take a bit of a gander around unsuspecting offices and homes.. Don’t know how true it ever was although it is certainly feasible enough if one has ever had the experience of seeing their cursor waltz across their screen due to a [trojan] invasion.. Would that things were still that innocent..
RW With all due respect, we don’t need this in the public domain.
I personally hear what you are saying, and I am always torn when I see something like this.. I invariably weigh it with that the number of newbie surfers has compounded phenomenally the last few years.. Many, many of those people have absolutely no clue that this is really possible.. They need the knowledge of knowing it could happen to them so they may seek to take some kind of preventive, protective action now..
Feb 20, 2009 - 3:43 pm 21. Cindy Sue Causey:Hate when this happens.. Soon as I posted, the newer comments since I was here earlier appeared.. Okay, I get it now about the concern for publishing precisely how it was accomplished.. The CMS part, perhaps..? Putting knowledge out there that non-cracking troublemakers might not have thought of otherwise…..
Until now. :\
Here’s hoping they’re busy elsewhere.
Feb 20, 2009 - 4:01 pm 22. Brian Richard Allen:The real story here is that Missus Cli’ton’s flunky was dropping in on us all.
That loathsome and fearsome Borderline Analy Retentive DC-Bar failure’s hold on power — and the size of Chelsea Hubbell Cli’ton’s multi-Billion Dollar trust fund — may be explained only by the Hot-Springs Arkansas based Cli’ton Crime Family’s built-on its theft of thousands of FBI-files monitering, collection, ownership, operation and control of the intimate details of the lives of every American — and of anyone of importance throughout the world.
Which the missus is currently touring on her introductory standing-over-and-shaking-down and listening to the continuing clink of coin tour.
Brian Richard Allen
Feb 20, 2009 - 6:40 pm 23. Harsh Reality:Los Angeles CalifCLI’TONocated 90028 and the Far Abroad
Dear Jacobsen,
It isn’t rocket science. Don’t write articles exposing (hypothetical, potential or otherwise) methods which may be in use to monitor terrorist cells.
We don’t want to read about them.
Your writing about them indicates NYT-level idiocy.
Once again, we don’t want to read about them.
Use your damned head, woman.
Feb 21, 2009 - 4:42 am 24. Self-hating Boomer:Apparently you didn’t know. He needs probable cause, but not a search warrant. Completely different from your home. Learn a little about the law, ok?
Feb 21, 2009 - 8:37 am 25. Self-hating Boomer:Cindy gets the essential point: legalities are moot when someone in Russia is peeking around your house because he installed a zombie on your computer with a spam email. As a practical matter, you have to take responsibility for your own security!!! Blame John von Neuman for inventing the hackable computer, Bill Gates for software that’s too friendly, and Tim Berners-Lee for building the web on top of the internet that was never designed to be secure.
Feb 21, 2009 - 8:44 am 26. jean gogh:interesting……
Feb 21, 2009 - 12:56 pm 27. ice:I put this on my mac to test it out and it was taking pictures of me everytime I logging on the computer and storing the pics for my retrieval later with IP data
I took it off but it was interesting.
http://adeona.cs.washington.edu/index.html
Feb 21, 2009 - 1:47 pm 28. Simone BC:So maybe the background to this story was planted with the intent of encouraging terrorists and other bad guys to switch from skype to some “new cool thing” that was built with nsa backdoors. Or for that matter a russian spy agency backdoor. Or maybe a competitor wants to hurt to ebay or skype. Or the story is straight.
How to tell? I don’t think one can, not for a few years anyway.
Shrug. That’s the nature of software. You have to trust the makers and distributors of the software you install, since they can put whatever they want in the software. For each piece of software you might install, do you trust the producers, do you trust the commentators?
Pesonally, I mostly trust skype.
Feb 22, 2009 - 5:07 am 29. Mark:From the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary: warmonger: one who urges or attempts to stir up war.
Iran has been waging a proxy war against the United States specifically, and the West in general, for decades, and now they’re on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons capabilities. If it’s “warmongering” to urge war against Iran, then I’m proud to be called a warmonger.
Feb 22, 2009 - 11:46 am 30. Mark:Oops, sorry: copy/pasted into the wrong article’s comments.
Feb 22, 2009 - 11:47 am 31. Mike T:You’re absolutely right, but the 4th amendment makes it clear that without probable cause, a search is illegal:
Again, I win; you lose, self-hating boomer. The authority to conduct a search of a private party per the 4th amendment is based on probable cause. Even the agency-issued warrants like National Security Letters have to be based on probable cause. An FBI agent can write their own NSL on the spot for your car, but they can go to prison for writing it if the FBI or a federal court decides that the agent had no probable cause.
Feb 23, 2009 - 4:58 am 32. ChipD:Once again, the ever-growing enlargement of the State, at the expense of privacy by the People;
again, it is for our “protection”;
Of course, someone might ask, who protects us from our Government?
Feb 23, 2009 - 10:40 am 33. deguello:Excellent information,and very timely, given The Messiah’s thuggish background and tendencies. Skype wiil be an excellent tool for the conservative resistance.
Feb 27, 2009 - 5:27 am 34. Patty:I seem to recall hearing that Osama used satellite phones until the media let it be known that our government could eavesdrop on his conversations and track his movements. He and his fellow terrorists quickly changed their method of communication. Never underestimate how much stories like this actually help the terrorists become more clandestine and successful in their plotting.
Mar 5, 2009 - 8:45 pm