A glaring security flaw’s been uncovered in Skype and other VoIP systems, potentially allowing hackers to access users’ identities, locations and even files.
Skype claims more than a half-billion registered users, and one report suggests that one in five overseas calls is made using the service.
But researchers headed by a team at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University say that Skype can be used to track not only users’ locations over time but also their peer-to-peer file-sharing activity. It works even when a user’s blocked callers or used a Network Address Translation (NAT) firewall.
And having done this, says the team, it’s easy to link to information such as name, age, address, profession and employer using social media sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn in order to build profiles on a single tracked target or a database of hundreds of thousands.
“These findings have real security implications for the hundreds of millions of people around the world who use VoIP or P2P file-sharing services,” says Keith Ross of NYU-Poly.
“A hacker anywhere in the world could easily track the whereabouts and file-sharing habits of a Skype user – from private citizens to celebrities and politicians – and use the information for purposes of stalking, blackmail or fraud.”
via Skype security flaw allows location tracking | TG Daily.
