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Skype Steps Up Security Spin |
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Written by Adam Gosling
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Thursday, 06 July 2006 |
Under the dubious title "Skype fights back" (we think it
should be more like Skype Fesses Up), Techworld has outlined how peer-2-peer
voice client developer Skype has begun a campaign to address some of the
security concerns it has so far been denying.
The article
reveals that Skype has begun a stealth public relations campaign talking to
selected journalists in the US
- Techworld being one of them.
The eBay-owned company has also appointed an internal
staffer to develop security guidelines for enterprises concerned about the way
Skype introduces potential vulnerabilities on their networks.
According to the Techworld piece, Skype's CSO, Kurt Sauer, says
the company is even reviewing the way it recommends user patches and upgrades
required to fix security vulnerabilities.
It's really quite outrageous that a company supplying
software to a claimed 100 million plus users can get away with passing off patches
as an optional upgrade without explaining exactly why it is required. They
should be doing more than "looking at the issues".
Skype tries to pass off its tardy attitude to enterprise security
on the basis that it must remain difficult to identify and track Skype traffic
so that US
cable companies can not block the service which threatens their revenues.
Sauer told Techworld: "One of the reasons Skype is difficult
o [sic] find is that the people who provide the carrier services [ISPs, telcos]
are in competition with Skype."
"We don't want the product to work in such a way as to allow
it to be degraded," he said.
Sauer claims that "unnamed US cable companies" were blocking
Skype traffic so as to degrade the service and make their own competing
offerings more attractive.
This may be so, but do we have to have a series of serious
security breaches, court cases and injunctions before Skype will face up to the
responsibilities it has to users and corporate security staff?
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