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Computing

Skype and the Bavarian trojan in the middle

Wikileaks has published a couple of leaked documents that detail how the Bavarian police, Ministry of Justice and the Prosecution office tried to arrange the purchase of malware to aid in the interception of encrypted data submitted via SSL or Skype via the internet.

If the intention was to intercept all Skype traffic in Bavaria or perhaps further afield then this could be a serious breach of civil liberties but I suspect it is merely the Bavarian authorities looking for an equivalent to a court-approved phone tap now that criminals have presumably adopted Skype or other voice over IP type technologies.

I don’t think the trojan horse approach is very practicable though as it either requires the targets to unwittingly install it or for the police to secretly gain physical access to their target’s computers in order to install the software themselves.

By Matt Wharton

Matt Wharton is a dad, vlogger and IT Infrastructure Consultant. He was also in a former life a cinema manager.

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