Re: On Skype URL eavesdropping

[Jeffrey Walton <noloader () gmail com>]

On Thu, May 16, 2013 at 5:41 PM, Kirils Solovjovs
<kirils.solovjovs () kirils com> wrote:
> You may have read about this in another list.
> http://lists.randombit.net/pipermail/cryptography/2013-May/004224.html
> http://financialcryptography.com/mt/archives/001430.html
>
>
> I'd like to give out some observations and point out some not so obvious
> risks (as if Microsoft Skypying™ on your conversations is not enough).
>
> Requests always come from the same IP 65.52.100.214.
> They have referrer and user agent set to a dash "-".
> They are always HEAD requests which immediately follow 302 redirects.
> They access both http and https links despite some speculations saying that
> they do it one way or the other.
> This is a relatively new phenomena that by my accounts is happening since
> the end of April 2013.
...
> Back to the point. Now that it's clear that [at least] links from users'
> private chats somehow magically end up at Redmond, it's obviously a privacy
> issue of having some usernames/password/sessions/whatever embedded in the
> URL.
There could be legal concerns here too (if a prosecutor takes interest
if folks besides the Swartz's of the world).

I can't wait to see the first CFAA violation brought against
interception services like these. Consider: the owner of the remote
server surely did not authorize the interception service to access the
site with a user's username and password. That's a clear violation of
exceeding one's authority under the CFAA since the interception
service had no authority from the server's owners.

Jeff

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