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What I find most interesting about Skype is that it rose from the ashes of Kazaa, and as far as I can remember was originally using a similar/same backend and p

by harel 8y ago

What I find most interesting about Skype is that it rose from the ashes of Kazaa, and as far as I can remember was originally using a similar/same backend and peer to peer protocols to facilitate the calls. When MS got I think they removed the peer-to-peer elements (which made skype great) and made it a centralised service. At least that is my recollection of events.

toyg 8y ago
The move to "supernodes" happened barely a month after the acquisition was finalized, iirc. I remember thinking it was a bit too quick to have been instigated by MS alone. The chief architect later declared that they started working on the move more than a year before the acquisition was done, mostly for scalability issues. But it's true that, before the acquisition, Skype had been resisting requests for wiretapping capabilities from the US government for at least three years. It is not unreasonable to think that this move was factored in the acquisition (a conversation like "the US government will remain on your tail forever -- just sell to us and switch on those supernodes, and the problems go away: we take the reputational hit (and reputational credit with USGov) and you get f-u money" would not be out of the realms of possibilities). After the acquisition, for sure, Skype has been completely owned by NSA and friends - this was confirmed in the Snowden docs.
iforgotpassword 8y ago
Yep, it used kazaa "supernodes" as servers for call setup and finding other nodes. Read an article about this a long time ago where someone reverse engineered it. There was also a lot of details about how Skype contained a shitload of anti reverse engineering techniques.
- Kliment 8y ago
  The source for that is "silver needle in the skype", http://www.secdev.org/conf/skype_BHEU06.handout.pdf http://www.secdev.org/conf/skype_BHEU06.handout.pdf

by harel 8y ago

toyg 8y ago

The move to "supernodes" happened barely a month after the acquisition was finalized, iirc. I remember thinking it was a bit too quick to have been instigated by MS alone. The chief architect later declared that they started working on the move more than a year before the acquisition was done, mostly for scalability issues. But it's true that, before the acquisition, Skype had been resisting requests for wiretapping capabilities from the US government for at least three years. It is not unreasonable to think that this move was factored in the acquisition (a conversation like "the US government will remain on your tail forever -- just sell to us and switch on those supernodes, and the problems go away: we take the reputational hit (and reputational credit with USGov) and you get f-u money" would not be out of the realms of possibilities). After the acquisition, for sure, Skype has been completely owned by NSA and friends - this was confirmed in the Snowden docs.

iforgotpassword 8y ago

Yep, it used kazaa "supernodes" as servers for call setup and finding other nodes. Read an article about this a long time ago where someone reverse engineered it. There was also a lot of details about how Skype contained a shitload of anti reverse engineering techniques.

Kliment 8y ago
The source for that is "silver needle in the skype", http://www.secdev.org/conf/skype_BHEU06.handout.pdf http://www.secdev.org/conf/skype_BHEU06.handout.pdf