NSA wiretaps Skype video calls

In 2008, Skype told that the service could not be wiretapped. Microsoft no longer stands by that claim, and a National Security Agency document shows analysts can eavesdrop on video calls.

Skype now has a backdoor that permits government surveillance of users' video and audio calls, according to a new report in the Guardian.

The report, based on leaked slides from the National Security Agency, appears to confirm growing suspicions about the popular video chat service -- and indicates calls may be able to be monitored as easily as an old-fashioned phone call.

One document quoted by the newspaper says intelligence analysts began to be able to monitor Skype video calls in July 2012: "The audio portions of these sessions have been processed correctly all along, but without the accompanying video. Now, analysts will have the complete 'picture.'"

This is a dramatic change from Skype's previous apparent resistance to eavesdropping.

In 2008, when the company was owned by eBay instead of Microsoft, a Skype spokeswoman told CNET that: "We have not received any subpoenas or court orders asking us to perform a live interception or wiretap of Skype-to-Skype communications. In any event, because of Skype's peer-to-peer architecture and encryption techniques, Skype would not be able to comply with such a request."

CNET asked Microsoft yesterday morning whether that statement was still correct. Microsoft did not respond.

It's possible for companies to create communications systems using strong end-to-end encryption believed to be proof against government snoops. Silent Circle, Off-the-Record Messaging for instant messages, and e-mail messages encrypted with PGP do precisely that.

But few companies take that step, which can be a significant engineering expense and complicated for customers to use. Another classified document, citing collaboration between NSA and FBI, said: "Feedback indicated that a collected Skype call was very clear and the metadata looked complete. Collaborative teamwork was the key to the successful addition of another provider to the PRISM system."

After buying Skype, Microsoft dramatically overhauled its architecture, replacing peer-to-peer "super nodes" with thousands of servers run by Microsoft -- a more centralized approach that may have made it easier for government eavesdroppers. Around the same time, Microsoft would no longer stand by Skype's earlier claim to be wiretap-unfriendly.

Matthew Kaufman, Skype's principal architect, said in a message on an e-mail list last month that the server change was due to the increasing use of mobile apps, which interact with Skype differently than desktop machines and often run in the background or get evicted from memory:

 How do we solve that for our users? Servers. Lots of them, and more and more often in the Windows Azure cloud infrastructure. In the case of instant messaging, we have merged the Skype and Windows Messenger message delivery backend services, and this now gets you delivery of messages even when the recipient is offline, and other nice features like spam filtering and malicious URL removal. For calling, we have the dedicated supernodes already, and additional services to help calls succeed when the receiving client is asleep and needs a push notification to wake up. And over time you will see more and more services move to the Skype cloud, offloading memory and CPU requirements from the mobile devices everyone wants to enjoy to their fullest and with maximum battery life.

There is no evidence that encrypted Skype calls can be passively monitored by the NSA or FBI without the assistance of Microsoft. In other words, the intelligence agency's vast eavesdropping apparatus can't vacuum up and use Skype calls in the same way it reportedly can intercept unencrypted e-mail or Web traffic by using fiber taps.

Instead, the federal government would serve an order on Microsoft, using a Title III wiretap order or a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act order, requiring it to divulge the contents of a Skype call.

Microsoft's most recent transparency report says the company did not divulge any Skype audio or video content to police in 2012. But the report refers only to "law enforcement requests," and does not appear to include requests made under FISA's separate procedures.

Microsoft no fan of existing WebRTC standard, proposes its own to get Skype onboard

Microsoft, objecting to a web standard promoted by its competitors? Get out. While Firefox, Opera and now Chrome have implemented WebRTC on some level for plugin-free VoIP and webcam chats, Microsoft doesn't think the existing, proposed standard is up to snuff for linking with existing devices or obeying "key web tenets." It's suggesting a new CU-RTC-Web standard to fix what it claims is broken with WebRTC. Thankfully, the changes are more technical improvements than political maneuvering: Microsoft wants a peer-to-peer transport level that gives more control as well as to reduce some of the requirements that it sees holding the technology back as of today. There's no doubt an economic incentive for a company that wants to push Skype in the browser, but the format is already in front of the W3C and could become a real cross-platform standard. If other W3C members are willing to (slightly) reinvent the wheel, Microsoft's approach could get Chrome and Internet Explorer users talking -- no, really talking.

Microsoft Builds A Robot So You Can Be In Two Places At Once

Microsoft spends over $9 billion on research and some of that money goes toward pretty cool things like putting Skype on wheels.
At its research lab in Redmond, Microsoft is working on a robot that will let you roam the room while on a videoconferencing call, controlled by you over the Internet. Using two cameras, a high-def display, this robot lets you control what you look at while on Skype, the Internet-calling service Microsoft acquired last year.
CNN has dubbed it the "robotic boss." The cable network's reporter seems to think managers will use it to hang with employees while they are really sprawled on a beach somewhere. We're not so sure about that, but it does show what the next generation of videoconferencing could look like.
Here's CNN's video of the device.
These clever researchers have come up with other types of Skype robots, too, like one that can take play with your dog when you are at work. This pet robot lets you see and talk to your dog through Skype, throw a ball and even give a treat.

1 million users sign up for Outlook.com in six hours

More than 1 million people are now using the new Outlook.com, Hotmail's successor, after Microsoft tweets the service's statistics after just six hours.

Outlook.com has seen more than 1 million people sign up for the service in just a few hours, Microsoft has said.
The sign-up figures for the successor to Hotmail were tweeted by @Outlook yesterday just over six hours after the new service was first announced.

Microsoft's figures on Outlook.com signups

The changes include the new email address -- @outlook.com -- which will replace the older @hotmail.com address, used by hundreds of millions worldwide across its more than 10 years of its service. Users can already "Upgrade to Outlook.com" to keep their existing address.
The new Web-based email service will eventually integrate Skype, delivering a new rival to Gmail-embedded Google's Talk service. Microsoft acquired Skype for $8.5 billion last year following European regulators signing off on the deal.
But the real measure of success will be if existing Hotmail users voluntarily make the jump to Outlook.com of their own accord: the software giant still has to hope it can generate enough buzz around the new service to prevent a mass exodus to rival services, such as Google's Gmail.
Google remains in the lead with 425 million users, while Hotmail has approximately more than 350 million at the last count.