Austrian official fuels Skype backdoor rumours

Off the cuff remarks by Austrian government officials suggest that Skype conversations might be intercepted.

Speaking at a recent meeting on lawful interception between ISPs and Austrian regulators, an unnamed “high-ranking” official at Austria’s interior ministry said that listening into a conversation over Skype presented no particular problems, Heise security reports.

The opinion contrasts with the view of Joerg Ziercke, president of Germany’s Federal Police Office (BKA). At a meeting last November Ziercke said that the inability to decipher the encryption used by Skype in order to intercept VoIP calls had become a problem in counter-terrorism investigations. Weeks after this, leaked documents outlining plans by German firm Digitask to develop software to intercept Skype VoIP communications and SSL transmissions, along with related costing and licensing proposals, surfaced through Wikileaks.

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