Showing posts with label Skype. Show all posts

Skype integration comes to Outlook.com in the UK, global rollout soon

Skype has finally come to Outlook.com. Back when Outlook was launched in July last year, Microsoft had promised users Skype integration with their accounts and nearly nine months later, it has kept its promise. Skype is rolling out a preview version of Skype for Outlook.com in the UK right now.

"Even with the best email service, sometimes text isn’t enough," reads the blog announcing the feature. "We all face those situations where it’s just easier to jump on a call to talk something through. Sometimes that quick call can accomplish more than a long email reply. That’s why we are bringing Skype audio and video calling to your Outlook.com inbox."

Talk and chat with your Skype contacts right from your inbox

Available in only the UK currently, Skype in Outlook.com will be made available in the US and Germany “in the coming weeks.” The global rollout will only be coming “this summer” though. “In the coming months, audio and video calling powered by Skype will be available in every Outlook.com inbox,” reads the blog.

To install Skype in your Outlook.com inbox, you will require a one-time download of a plug-in for your browser. Currently, the most recent versions of Internet Explorer, Chrome and Firefox are supported. You will then be prompted to pair your Skype account with your Outlook one so you can make voice and video calls from your email inbox. This way, you will be able to add all of your Skype contacts to your Outlook.com contacts list for easy access.

While text messaging is supported using Skype too, you do not require the plug-in to access this feature. You can straight away start chatting using Skype from Outlook.com.

Outlook.com already boasts of having more than one million users in India. Microsoft’s revamped mail service would do well if it would roll out Skype integration for India soon. The wait sure seems to be worthwhile, though. Skype has become synonymous with VoIP calling and video chatting and its integration within Outlook is only bound to help both the services. Gmail and its Hangout feature better watch out!

Report by : Nishtha Kanal

New Skype malware mines Bitcoins for cyber criminals

A new malware plaguing popular Voice-over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service Skype has surfaced. Kaspersky Lab Expert Dmitry Bestuzhev shares in a blog post that a screenshot of a Skype client sent to him by a friend from Venezuela has revealed a malware campaign affecting Skype, similar to another malware campaign on Skype he had written about. The malware is capable of turning the infected machine "to a slave of the bitcoin generator". That, and it causes the CPU usage increases significantly.

Bestuzhev further notes that the a large number of the potential victims reside in Italy, Russia, Poland, Costa Rica, Spain, Germany, Ukraine, among others. He noted that worryingly, the average clicking rate was quite high too, at 2,000 clicks per hour. The initial trojan, which Kaspersky detected as Trojan.Win32.Jorik.IRCbot.xkt., is downloaded from a server in India.

Generating over 2,000 clicks per hour

Once the malware manages to infect the system, it drops in other pieces of malware. There are downloads from the Hotfile.com service and the malware also connects to its C2 server in Germany, the IP address of which is 213.165.68.138:9000. The process runs with the command – ?bitcoin-miner.exe -a 60 -l no -o http://suppp.cantvenlinea.biz:1942/ -u XXXXXX0000001@gmail.com -p XXXXXXXX, wherein the sensitive data was replaced by XXXXXX. It takes undue advantage of the infected CPU to mine Bitcoins for the miscreant.

Bestuzhev advises to watch out for signs – which includes your machine working hard and using up all available CPU resources – that may mean you're infected.

It maxes out your CPU

Even as you're reading this, the campaign is active on Skype. This isn't the first instance of malware on Skype. Back home too, in October last year, the service was hit by a spam attack. The government issued an advisory informing Skype users of the malicious spam campaign.

"A malicious spam campaign is on the rise targeting Skype users by sending instant message which appears to come from friends in the Skype contact list," the advisory read. The Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) under the Communications and Information Technology ministry shared that the malware was adept at gaining control of the victim's machine by opening a backdoor and communicating to a remote http server.

Cyber security experts unearthed that the malware-ridden content has been found "lurking in the vicinity of cyber networks of Indian users who use this popular Voice-over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service". The malware was reportedly stealing user details, fuelling click fraud activity, while also posing as ransomware.

As a measure of caution, the advisory asked Skype users in the country to "not follow unsolicited web links or attachments in Skype messages and install latest security updates to Skype". The advisory added that users should download the latest version of Skype from trusted sources. To secure themselves further, users should install and maintain updated anti-virus software on gateways and desktops. The advisory stressed on the need to maintain caution when opening attachments, accepting file transfers, clicking links to web pages. Disabling the auto play feature altogether is a safe practice. Users should be careful to ward off social engineering attacks, it said

Report by : tech2 News Staff

Can Skype Eavesdrop on Your Calls?

Does Skype let police and authorities spy on users' conversations? That's the question a wide group of advocacy organizations including the Electronic Frontier Foundation as well as Reporters Without Borders, and many activists and journalists, are asking in an open letter published online.

The signatories note that Skype, with more than 600 million users, has become "one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies." And many of those users rely on it for sensitive conversations, be it activists living under authoritarian regimes, or journalists talking to sources. In other words, users rely on Skype "for the privacy of their communications and, in some cases, their lives," the letter reads.

In light of that, "it is unfortunate that these users, and those who advise them on best security practices, work in the face of persistently unclear and confusing statements about the confidentiality of Skype conversations, and in particular the access that governments and other third parties have to Skype user data and communications."

That's why the group wants Skype and its parent company Microsoft to publicly release a regularly updated transparency report, a la Google, detailing its privacy policies as well as what data Skype releases to third parties, what data the company itself collects, how many times it responds to government requests to release that data, and what criteria it uses when making that call.

What's more, the signatories want to know what responsibilities Skype thinks it has regarding laws like the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA), how they respond to subpoenas, and to National Security Letters. These are special subpoenas used by authorities in national security cases that can even be accompanied by a gag order that prevents the recipient from disclosing the existence of the request.

Basically, the signatories want to know whether Skype's stance on privacy and eavesdropping has change over the years, particularly after it was acquired by Microsoft.

Microsoft refused to grant Mashable an interview with its Chief Privacy Officer, Brendon Lynch. The company answered our requests for comment with an email stating it is reviewing the letter and that "Microsoft has an ongoing commitment to collaborate with advocates, industry partners and governments worldwide to develop solutions and promote effective public policies that help protect people’s online safety and privacy."

In the past, as Slate reported, Skype has always been widely trusted thanks to its encryption and peer-to-peer based architecture that made snooping on calls virtually impossible. In 2007, Skype itself publicly stated that its practices made it impossible for them to wiretap conversations. And the German police even complained about it.

But in recent years, things might have changed. Hackers pointed to a recent redesign of Skype's architecture, a change that might have made it easier for the company and interested authorities to spy on users' calls.

"Microsoft made this change to Skype's architecture to make it more centralized," explains Eva Galperin, an activist at the EFF. "But by making it more centralized, suddenly they were capable exactly of the sort of surveillance that Skype had earlier denied that it's capable of."

At the time of the change, security and privacy expert Chris Soghoian wrote that "until it is more transparent, Skype should be assumed to be insecure, and not safe for those whose physical safety depends upon confidentiality of their calls."

Skype denied that the change had anything to do with enhancing eavesdropping capabilities, but it refused to clarify whether it allows wiretapping requests, when questioned by Slate in the summer of 2012.

The fact that, in June 2011, Microsoft entered an application for a patent for "legal intercept" that seems tailor-made for chat services like Skype didn't help putting rumors to rest.

Also, in early 2012, after the arrest of Megaupload's Kim Dotcom and his associates, the FBI said they used emails and Skype chat logs dating back to 2007 to nab the file-sharing guru. This seemingly contradicts Skype's policy of retaining chat logs for only 30 days.

Skype's strong stance on its users' privacy is no longer clear, and experts are wary.

Advocacy group Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) wrote in a statement to Mashable that even though they haven't decided whether to sign the letter, they "do think that companies should be transparent with users about their privacy practices" and that "Skype should incorporate transparency into its business practices."

The EFF publishes a report titled "Who has your back?" detailing which companies are transparent about government data requests or whether they fight for users' privacy in courts or in Congress.

For Galperin, being transparent is the least a tech company can do nowadays. "If you are hanging on to users' private data and users are concerned of government requests of their data, or government takedowns, or surveillance, then one of the best of ways to alleviate that sort of concern is to be transparent.”

Report by : Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai

Microsoft releases Skype for Windows Phone 8

An important app missing on Microsoft's Windows Phone 8 devices, which is available on other platforms, was the Skype app. According to Pocket-Lint, the Redmond-based company has released a Skype app for WP8 for the Nokia Lumia 920, Lumia 820, HTC 8X and 8S.

The app has been labelled as a preview release, as opposed to a final version. The WP8 Skype app offers additional features over the original WP7.5 version, and offers greater connectivity with the rest of the phone. The biggest new feature of the app is the ability to be left on in the background. Skype contacts can also be seen in the People Hub, thus letting you start new conversations with just a tap.

Now get Skype for WP8

Recently, Microsoft had announced that the company is phasing out its Messenger service, and has started migrating contacts to Skype. As per the blog post, Skype states that Messenger users will be able to reach their Messenger friends on Skype. Messenger users will have the ability to instant message (IM) and video-call their contacts by updating to Skype.

Skype states that this effort started with the release of Skype 6.0 for Mac and Windows a few weeks ago, which allows users to sign i

nto Skype using a Microsoft account. Now Messenger users need to update to the latest version of Skype, sign in using a Microsoft account, and they will find their Messenger contacts moved there.

Tony Bates, president, Skype division at Microsoft states, “Our goal remains to deliver the best communications experience for everyone, everywhere. We want to focus our efforts on making things simpler for our users while continuously improving the overall experience. We will retire Messenger in all countries worldwide in the first quarter of 2013 (with the exception of mainland China where Messenger will continue to be available).”

Skype states that over the next few months it will help users with the transition process and assist them with other information. To help users learn how to get the most out of Skype, the VoIP service states that they should be on the lookout for some special offers later this year as users join their Messenger friends in the migration.

Skype recently released its latest version, Skype 6.0, for Mac and Windows desktop users. The update brought to the table Microsoft and Facebook account integration. Users can now sign into Skype using either their Microsoft or Facebook accounts. In Skype 6.0, users can send instant messages to their Windows Live Messenger, Hotmail, and Outlook.com contacts via Skype. Users with Microsoft accounts can merge the MS account with Skype. All they have to do is sign in to Skype with their Microsoft accounts.

At the time, Skype announced that it has in the pipeline a feature with which users can make audio and video calls to Windows Live Messenger customers on Skype desktop clients. The feature will be rolled out in the weeks to come.

Report by: by Shunal Doke

Hackers using Skype to attack Windows PCs

Free internet-calling service Skype is being used by hackers to distribute a 'worm' that infects users Windows PCs

LONDON: Free internet-calling service Skype is being used by hackers to distribute a 'worm' that infects users Windows PCs.

On clicking an instant message saying "lol is this your new profile pic?" users are unwittingly downloading a file containing a Trojan horse malware file.

This opens a backdoor allowing hackers to hijack infected PCs and recruit them into a "botnet army".

Users can be locked out of their machines and held to ransom, the BBC reports.

According to the report, Skype said in a statement that they 'are aware of this malicious activity and are working quickly to mitigate its impact.'

"We strongly recommend upgrading to the newest Skype version and applying updated security features on your computer," the firm said in a statement.

"Additionally, following links - even when from your contacts - that look strange or are unexpected is not advisable," it added.

Report by: ANI

Skype users hit by ransomware, click fraud

Skype users are being targeted by a bout of click fraud and ransomware, The Next Web reports. Users have been receiving a seemingly harmless looking message that reads, “lol is this your new profile pic?”. This is a malware-ridden message. The message is followed by a link that downloads a zip file on the PC. On running the executable file inside (skype_02102012_image.exe or skype_06102012_image.zip or skype_08102012_image.zip), the PC gets infected, leveraging a Java exploit via BlackHole 2.0. Shortly after, users will be prompted with a warning, typical of ransomware.

Users with systems hit by ransomware lose access to their data. They are denied access to it until they pay ransom to get it back. A GFI report explains this, “The above is a typical Ransomware scare message that locks the user out of their data, encrypts the files and demands payment (via Moneypak) to the tune of $200. The IP address and geographical location is displayed in the bottom right hand corner, along with various threats related to the downloading of MP3s, illegal pornography, gambling and more besides”.

Skype users affected by malware

However, the report highlights that the link been changed on a number of occasions, and the text has also been altered. Although the malware-laden message is currently spreading in English and German, it can be translated into several other languages.

The Next Web adds that although GFI first highlighted the issue on Friday, it has only been confirmed now that users are indeed being targeted using click fraud and ransomware.

In addition to ransomware, the message has been found to indulge click fraud. Giving an insight into this, the report adds that in the span of 10 minutes, GFI recorded 2,259 transmissions.

In his statement to The Next Web, a Skype spokesperson shared, “Skype takes the user experience very seriously, particularly when it comes to security. We are aware of this malicious activity and are working quickly to mitigate its impact. We strongly recommend upgrading to the newest Skype version and applying updated security features on your computer. Additionally, following links – even when from your contacts – that look strange or are unexpected is not advisable”.

Recently, reports about a bug affecting Skype grabbed headlines. A strange bug had been found sending instant messages to the wrong people on a user's contact list on Skype, causing users much discomfort. Skype then began rolling out the first batch of patches of a hotfix. In an official post on Skype Garage, Skype confirms that they have begun rolling out a hotfix over for multiple Skype clients to address a couple of known issues. By way of its official post, Skype added that users should download the updated versions of the service.