UPDATED 12:31 EDT / MARCH 28 2013

NEWS

Skype Is Playing With Your Privacy Via IP Leaks

If you are using Skype for any of your communications, let me recall you that this tool still has the IP leak bug alive. It’s been over a year when this bug was discovered and reported to Microsoft, but the windows maker didn’t do anything about it. This has led to increase of attacks on systems where someone’s IP address can be searched via Skype following by launching denial-of-service attacks on that person’s account. This means Skype is doing nothing but betraying its users by leaking out their private information. And the worst part is that most Skype users are unaware of this bug.

So how does it work? Here’s how:

There are lots of Skype resolvers out there in the market that are offered along with “booter” or “stresser” services. These online attack tools-for-hire can be rented to launch denial-of-service attacks.

So when a person wants to knock someone offline but don’t know their Internet address, he can simply search on Skype to see if they have an account. The resolvers work regardless of any privacy settings the target user may have selected within the Skype program’s configuration panel. So, if you have even turned on the privacy settings for your account, you are still at risk of losing information via IP leak.


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