How real is wiretapping Skype conversations and intercepting Skype chat?

Question

Skype

Previously, I had confidence that a Skype conversation was completely private. Now there are doubts about it.

Two points are of interest. First, the possibility of wiretapping / interception by the forces of civil services and just arbitrary people.

In the summer, and even earlier , the news slipped through that agreements with special. services have been achieved and the necessary changes have been made to the EULA. How realistic is this? Is it already implemented? It is known which organs can listen? Are there known cases of wiretapping? Leaked this wiretap?

About half a year ago I read the news, but did not really delve into the fact that some reverse engineers had learned to intercept and decrypt Skype traffic. It's true? How big is the degree of decryption? Is it true that now, if an attacker has intercepted your Skype traffic, does this mean that he can listen to the audio file with the Skype conversation?

Maybe there are some other vulnerabilities when using Skype?

Answer 1

If you want confidence in the absence of wiretapping from the outside, then the use of a third-party service, no matter what guarantees it provides, is excluded as a class. Where there is a third party, there is no privacy.
Set up jabber with pgp on your own server and sleep well.

Answer 2

Yes. there was information that after the acquisition of Skype by Microsoft, the latter provided the corresponding keys to the Russian special services. I have not yet heard about the possibility of private interception.

Answer 3

The only island of secure voice remained SIP2SIP with encryption.
The probability of listening is equal to the probability of intercepting an encrypted email.

Answer 4

I wouldn't count on any kind of privacy. Skype has already stated that it stores the history of correspondence on its servers specifically for providing "on request". As far as I understand, only state bodies have the right to request.
The traffic itself, at the same time, remains encrypted (and still p2p with supernodes), so getting your audio signal by an outsider seems to me an unlikely event. Although yes, I heard that in some cases decryption is possible.
For myself, I concluded: texting on Skype is not safe, conversations are more or less safe.

Answer 5

Skype has dropped p2p, proof: arstechnica.com/business/2012/05/skype-replaces-p2p-supernodes-with-linux-boxes-hosted-by-microsoft/ .
So the whole voice goes through their servers where they can do whatever they want. Whether they do right now, no one knows.

Answer 6

As far as I know, the only way to listen to Skype is to install a plugin into it. In this case, the plugin has access to the audio track before it is encrypted.

Answer 7

Big brother already has Skype from that year.

Answer 8

Oh oh oh. Things are bad with Skype right now. On the subject of confidentiality, I would not lay high hopes on him. Often lately there is news about Skype wiretapping, account hacking, etc.

Answer 9

The program can definitely record Skype and chats . I tried it myself.