Researchers from the University of Warsaw have developed a tool with which secret messages can be hidden in silences during Skype calls. The secret messages are indistinguishable from ‘real’ silences and so hardly to detect.
The system SkypeHide that by researchers from the University of Warsaw was developed, works by the packets sent by Skype during silences sends, to ‘hijack’. During silences send Skype packets of 70 bit, at 130-bit packets for voice. The researchers were able to encrypted messages, inject it into the packets during silences were sent, reports New Scientist.
According to the Polish researchers, the ‘hijacked’ messages indistinguishable from normal silences, allowing outsiders the messages hardly could detect. However, the researchers there in order to the person on the other end of the line, the messages successfully to decrypt. Very quickly, the method does not work: the hidden data is with less than 1 kilobits per second are transmitted. The forwarding of a file of a megabyte therefore takes over two hours.
The research team will be the tool in June during a conference in France reveal. The researchers would the idea have come because of the fear that Skype calls can be intercepted, says one of the researchers, Wojciech Mazurczyk, against New Scientist.