more on French government bans Skype at Universities

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Luca Fabbri <lfabbri () yahoo com>
Date: October 25, 2005 12:01:04 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: RE: [IP] French government bans Skype at Universities


The French government’s decision refers to “network security”. Let’s  
not forget that:

Skype is a closed and 100% proprietary product that can do with your  
computer whatever it wants once it is installed;
it uses port 80 to circumvent firewalls in totally inappropriate way  
that could bring down the whole Internet if Skype was more widely used.


I am terrified by the idea of a rogue party being able to hack into  
Skype and using it as a vehicle to launch a viral attack.



Luca Fabbri








From: "Steven M. Bellovin" <smb () cs columbia edu>
Date: October 24, 2005 9:15:00 AM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: French government bans Skype at Universities


According to http://www.01net.com/editorial/289360/telephonie/skype-
banni-des-facs-par-la-securite-nationale/
the French government has banned use of Skype at universities. The
purported reason: it's insecure. http://www.oberle.org/?p=122 points
out that the real reason may be that it's too secure. A third possible
reason, though I'd have to know more about the funding model there:
someone is losing money because of free phone calls.

--Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb




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