Skype Steganographic VoIP Calls
The
technology is really going insane now, reaching new heights and ways of doing
things and that the crime too has going high tech with the use of this
disruptive technology.
Skype is the global leader in providing the uninterrupted VoIP calling to the world, we
know, but do we know that this Skype could also be a good place to send secret
hidden coded messages, which they say are impossible to crack or decipher even
for the FBI,
VoIP calling itself is tough thing to trace for the worldwide security agencies, and
if the secret coded messaging could take place over Skype, than how the
security issues would be dealt this is a big concern and should be for the
global agencies who are experts in tracing the calls, sms or internet?
SkypeHide: How secret data embedding took place in Skype
VoIP calling?
Professor Wojciech Mazurczyk at the Institute of Telecommunications in Warsaw, Poland, claims that he could use Skype to send hidden messages, they say this as SKYPEHIDE technique, reportedly he says, that a ‘SILENCE’ patch or a PAUSE patch between the verbal communication is a good place to inject, code or embed the secret invisible messages (steganograph), which are highly encrypted and could be un-encrypted and deciphered at the other end without reaching to the security agencies if they are tracing your Skype VoIP communication,
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| Image courtesy |
Fastcompany.com
describes this as:
“The system
relies on a feature of Skype whereby instead of simply sending no data when
there's no sounds to transmit--such as between words or sentences--Skype simply
sends shorter data packets (70 bits long instead of 130-bit packets for
speech). The Polish team's system hijacks these short snippets of data and
replaces the bits with different info that they choose. The Skype software
ignores the "silent" packets, but a suitable system can still decode
the silent messages. As a bonus the entire setup is hard to detect and is
capable of sending up to 1 kilobit per second of secret data of any type, be it
text or video.”
Venturebeat
describes this as:
“Skype calls use 256-bit advanced
encryption by default, but that's not secure enough for some people. So a prof.
at the Warsaw University of Technology has created a way to communicate even
more privately on Skype -- by using silence.”
Silence
is always a boon but it is not always. .. ?! What will Skype do, when there is
a ‘secret’ ‘lying’ in the ‘silence’?
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