[Infowarrior] - Skype flaw reveals users' location, file-downloading habits

[Richard Forno]

(c/o MS)

Skype flaw reveals users' location, file-downloading habits

A team of researchers has uncovered an issue that imperils Skype
users' privacy by putting their location and identity up for grabs

By Joan Goodchild, Senior Editor
December 1, 2011

Researchers have found a flaw in Skype, the popular
Voice-over-Internet-Protocol service which allows users to make video
phone calls and internet chat with their computers. The vulnerability
can expose your location, identity and the content you're
downloading. Microsoft, which owns Skype, says they are working on
the problem.

The issue was uncovered earlier this year by a team of researchers
from Polytechnic Institute of New York University (NYU-Poly), MPI-SWS
in Germany and INRIA in France and included Keith Ross, Stevens Le
Blond, Chao Zhang, Arnaud Legout, and Walid Dabbous. The team
presented the research in Berlin recently at the Internet Measurement
Conference 2011 in a paper titled "I know where you are and what you
are sharing."

The researchers found several properties of Skype that can track not
only users' locations over time, but also their peer-to-peer (P2P)
file-sharing activity, according to a summary of the findings on the
NYU-Poly web site. Earlier this year, a German researcher found a
cross-site scripting flaw in Skype that could allow someone to change
an account password without the user' consent.

...

http://www.csoonline.com/article/695631/skype-flaw-reveals-users-location-file-downloading-habits


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