NOW READ THIS
("Security Advisory")
Submitted by: Bill Hickey
NCVA List Master
NRT-0379 German Skype Hacking:
Leaked documents appear to show that German police hired a company to create Trojans
capable of capturing traffic from Skype and SSL. The two scanned documents, which
appear on the Wikileaks website in their German form, are difficult to verify, but one
appears to describe how a security company, Digitask, was asked to create a "Skype
Capture Unit" based around Trojans planted on targeted PCs covertly transferring data
to a remote server. The company hired to carry out the hacking said, "As requested by
you, we hereby submit an offer for a surveillance method of the encrypted VoIP protocol
Skype." The other document relates to an apparent exchange between the Bavarian police,
the Ministry of Justice and the Prosecution office, on how to divide up the costs of
this system. According to Wikileaks, this originally appeared on German website
Piratenpartei, but was removed, speculating that this could be due to legal threats.
The description of the Skype Capture Unit is dated 4 September 2007 with a 'delivery
timescale' for a targeted system in weeks, implying that the system could have been
operational for some time.
(TechWorld.com 29JAN08)