The online community is buzzing with news that a research group in China has successfully disabled the proprietary protocol of the world’s leading free VoIP service, Skype. Skype has denied these claims, but the author of the report has provided evidence.
According to Charlie Paglee, CEO of Vozin Communications, a VoIP company based in Fremont, California, engineers at a small research facility in China have cracked the proprietary protocol provided by Skype to create a third-party application capable of connecting with Skype’s 100 million customers.
Paglee shared this information on his personal blog yesterday, along with a screenshot showing Skype connecting directly to a very “basic” application. A friend of his in China made a call to test the connection quality without using Skype. The author also tested the quality of two calls with his friends in China and found that his IP address was “100% accurate” on the third-party software.
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The interface of the Chinese engineers’ alternative to Skype. Photo: voipwiki |
“The first time we talked, there was quite a bit of echo on my side. The second time, the audio quality was just as good as Skype. Currently, they have only replaced the voice calls and haven’t shared video yet“, Paglee wrote.
Paglee did not name the research group but mentioned that they are working on a demo and hope to release a product by the end of August. The goal of the Chinese engineers is to create a client application that is 100% compatible with Skype.
On the other hand, Skype insists: “We have no evidence to support that this is true. Even if they can do it, the software’s code will lack the features and reliability of Skype“.
The company did not address any of the points Paglee raised in his blog. In a response to eWeek magazine, a Skype spokesperson stated: “No reverse engineering technique poses a threat to the security and synchronization of Skype’s codebase“.
Thuy Huong
