Monday, March 11, 2013

Skype is spying on Chinese citizens...

There is one thing that binds the phrases “kinky cinema,” “hired killer,” and “throwing eggs.” If you type any one of them into a special eavesdropping-enabled version of Skype used in China, you could find yourself under surveillance.

That’s according to a research project by Jeffrey Knockel, a computer-science graduate student at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. As Bloomberg Businessweek reported today, Knockel recently found a way to bypass encryption used by a version of Skype designed specifically for Chinese users, and in doing so uncovered secret keyword lists used in China to monitor Skype users’ communications.

According to the 27-year-old researcher, the software has a built-in surveillance blacklist that scans messages sent between users for specific words and phrases. If a user types one of the offending phrases into the Skype text chat, it triggers an alert—sending a copy back to a centralized computer server and flagging who sent the message and when. Full story...

Related posts:
  1. Microsoft seeks patent for spy tech for Skype...
  2. Skype makes chats and user data more available to police...
  3. Golden Shield, China's all-seeing eye. ( Must read)
  4. Song of the Grass-Mud Horse (Cao Ni Ma) or how Chinese bloggers mock...
  5. Microsoft hypocritically attacks Google over privacy...
  6. Nowhere to hide: New Facebook app to track offline users...
  7. Every Move You Make: US to adopt new biometric surveillance system?

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