Skype Protocol Has Been Cracked. The Skype protocol will be reverse engineered by August 2006 and application code will be offered for license.

It has been done. IT HAS BEEN DONE. I am doing a total cut and paste job here. Read below. Very bold statements here below. I have just put the most interesting ones in red. Remember the miniskype… Well here is the big news.

«At the end of 2005 I made some predictions about the VoIP industry which I will review further in a day or two. While a couple of my predictions have already proved correct, perhaps the most interesting was:

6. The Skype protocol will be reverse engineered by August 2006 and application code will be offered for license.

Today I received a call through Skype from a friend at a company in China, except according to him he was not using Skype to call me. His company has successfully reverse engineered the Skype protocol and he wanted to call me in the United States to see how it worked between physically distant IP addresses. We talked for a little over nine minutes before the call dropped. Then I called him back using my Skype and we spoke for another three minutes. The first time we talked there was a noticeable echo on my end, which is understandable since they are not using the GIPs iLaC codec. The second time the voice quality was good ol’ Skype clear. At present they only support placing Skype peer-to-peer phone calls and they have not yet implemented presence. They have plans to add presence, instant messaging, and a host of other features. Their end goal is to create a client 100% compatible with Skype. They sent me a screen shot of their software (below) and my IP address was 100% correct. One of their engineers told me the news a few days ago, but I wanted to wait until I had actually seen the software or at least received a call before I wrote about it. They say their software is not stable enough to release to the public, but they are working night and day on a demo which they hope to launch before the end of August. » source : http://www.voipwiki.com/blog/?p=16

Comments

[skype_staff]

Just nonsens!
Nothing was hacked.. and will be hacked!
Just 'catching' users and collect visitors with those hokes!

Spend your time only for useful information!

Regards

[Jeff L.]

Hi Rick,
The unoptimized version of iLBC is open source, so no license needed. See http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3951.txt.

This crack, if true (I have no reason to doubt it), comes 4 months after the original crack which didn't get much play in the blogosphere. See my post for more info: http://community.eqo.com/blog/jlaporte

Cheers.

[Hopesome]

Jan in Malasia上有更多关于此事的报道。据Jan称，在7月13日这天，中国公司的工程师用一款非Skype软件和Jan进行了Skype通话。

[ABC]

Does companies in china have any other things to do except pirate and steal things from other companies / people. When will they create their own. Pirates will be seen as heros in their countries..what a joke man

[PJ]

Yahoo had this same problem w/ their chat client, but the clones never got very far because the native Yahoo seems more "robust" and easier to use. Also with clones you have to worry about the names of servers changing and authentication problems. I'm sure Skype could keep China busy. But is it really that big of a deal?

I think Yahoo allows some "other" programs to get into the network, but you'll never get all the features w/ a clone. On the other hand, last I looked the MSN/AIM clients were pathetic, so I'd only use Trillian for those networks.

So, Skype could add new features, new ways to authenticate the connections and the clone hackers would always be one step behind.

I think you can look at chat protocols as a way to see where this is going, right?

A) When I'm home, I might use Trillian because 1. Meebo doesn't work on my home system for some reason and 2. I don't trust leaving the Yahoo client running in the background unattended, besides, it's a waste of my CPU/RAM, 3. I just don't need all the flimflam when I'm working, and 4. Sometimes I get spammed by random people through the Yahoo network, so sometimes I turn it off entirely.

B) When I'm somewhere else, like the library, I'll probably use Meebo. Its wonderful, when it works. Sure, I'm still using the Yahoo network with Meebo, but I'm limited. I can't send files, I don't see the emoticons the way they should look, which is sometimes confusing, and I'm always explaining to people that I'm in Meebo and not Yahoo, and that gets to be annoying after a while.

C) Why would I actually use the real Yahoo client? To play multiplayer games, share photos, kill time? As a geeky "power user" I probably don't use the actual client as often as most people, but I check it out from time to time to see what "cool" new features have been added.

[Rick]

How do they communicate with Skype? They don't have Gips' soundware and codecs. They will have to license that.

[wanaxe]

I believe this is the company you mentioned.
http://www.coobol.com/