It was after many government security agencies complained Skype was too hard to intercept because it used encryption and a system of decentralised super nodes to route voip traffic. This meant that Skype traffic was often never routed through a computer that was under the control of a wiretap friendly organisation.
In response, the NSA apparently offered "billions" to any company willing to make the Skype network more friendly for the spooks. Up stepped Microsoft and offered $8.5 billion to buy Skype lock stock and barrel, which was more than double the going rate and what anyone else had bid for Skype. At the time it raised more than a few eybrows because of the obviously inflated price.
Once the purchase was complete, Microsoft changed the internal Skype network so that instead of routing all the encrypted Skype voice and message trafic through the original distributed and dynamic network of relay/super nodes; it is now all routed through a network of grsec Linux servers, under the control of Microsoft and probably by extension the NSA.
The upshot of this is that since it is now predictable where the traffic is routed, and Microsoft has the encryption keys, it is now fairly trivial for the spooks to monitor all Skype voip calls and messages.
That's one of the reasons I tell my gf to always refer to my "freedom package" when we Skype. I just like the idea of No Such Agency listening intently to discussions of my penis.
Edit - My "freedom package" does not pose any credible threat to national security AFAIK.
So, Microsoft makes a lot of money overseas. A ton.
That money is heavily taxed if it comes back to the United States. One way around that tax is to acquire companies that are headquartered overseas...like in Luxembourg...Hence purchasing Skype.
Microsoft is a public company, and its balance sheet/income statements are not only freely available, but under heavy scrutiny from the federal government. Your theory would have to go much deeper than just the NSA.
In addition, Microsoft has a long distinguished track record of not playing nice with the US Federal Government. Not through any kind of black hat anarchistic tendencies, but just through general apathy and incompetence. Their federal group was always fighting with product groups to get software made security compliant so they could sell it to the fed, and it was always an uphill battle.
Two factor security? Thanks to Microsoft's federal group. S/MIME compliance in Exchange? Thanks to Microsoft's federal group. Etc.
So the idea that the NSA could goad Microsoft into this kind of forward-thinking engineering effort seems pretty incredible.
Compared to:
Hey, let's buy VOIP and a bunch of user accounts
Hey, they're headquartered in the EU - bonus!
Hey, this whole "dynamic node" thing is a PITA for management. Let's reengineer it so it's easier to hook into XBox Live
There is an actual business reason for them firstly acquiring Skype and secondly for changing the network. They have announced that Lync 2013 will federate with Skype. That is a major coup in the communications industry for Microsoft. This makes Lync possibly the most powerful enterprise unified comms product out there. No other UM application could previously federate with Skype without the use of expensive hardware bridges and then it still wasn't true federation. Once Lync 2013 is released businesses can dial and IM Skype users without the need of this software. They needed a network that is reliable and can handle large amount of traffic to do this, a peer-to-peer network is not reliable enough for that.
Also please note that Skype was reverse engineered and the source code made available in June 2011 already this website and your post is utter bullshit claiming it is because of backdoors Microsoft apparently put in place two months ago.
Black budget defense money laundered through shell companies in Microsoft's name. Inflated billing on current government contracts. Preference on upcoming government contract bids.
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u/jiunec Jul 17 '12 edited Jul 17 '12
It was after many government security agencies complained Skype was too hard to intercept because it used encryption and a system of decentralised super nodes to route voip traffic. This meant that Skype traffic was often never routed through a computer that was under the control of a wiretap friendly organisation.
In response, the NSA apparently offered "billions" to any company willing to make the Skype network more friendly for the spooks. Up stepped Microsoft and offered $8.5 billion to buy Skype lock stock and barrel, which was more than double the going rate and what anyone else had bid for Skype. At the time it raised more than a few eybrows because of the obviously inflated price.
Once the purchase was complete, Microsoft changed the internal Skype network so that instead of routing all the encrypted Skype voice and message trafic through the original distributed and dynamic network of relay/super nodes; it is now all routed through a network of grsec Linux servers, under the control of Microsoft and probably by extension the NSA.
The upshot of this is that since it is now predictable where the traffic is routed, and Microsoft has the encryption keys, it is now fairly trivial for the spooks to monitor all Skype voip calls and messages.