Federal Government funding research into VOIP wiretapping
I can’t say I’m surprised, it makes sense. Plain old telephone service (POTS) can be tapped, and now that VOIP is coming into it’s own, the FBI and others need new ways of tapping the conversations. CNET is reporting on one such initiative that seems to be proving successful at the first step towards tapping a conversation taking place over Skype. Even one that uses an anonymizing proxy server.
The technique involved uses a unique identifier that is embedded in the conversation. You see one issue with the anonymizing servers for those trying to eavesdrop is that you don’t know who is talking to whom. This unique identifier defeats that problem and allows the call to be traceable. Conversations were not tapped using this technique, just identified.
Once again, sunbeltblog led me to this one.