Skype – recorded conversations in China recorded with deplorable security 5wn1l

Published on 13/01/2020

A contractor who listens to and records Skype conversations in China for Microsoft its that the security requirements were almost non-existent.

A few months ago, Microsoft made the news by itting to record and listen to private Skype conversations. The company had defended itself by explaining that wiretaps were only conducted by contractors outside the company and that records were not kept.

While these two pieces of information seemed rather shaky in of safety, they are now contradicted by one of the contractors employed by the company.

In a new article in the Guardian, the man in question explains “that there were virtually no safety precautions in the process.”

Worse still, it would appear that the sessions of eavesdropping on private conversations were taken lightly. The entrepreneur explains that, initially, if the wiretaps were conducted in a dedicated office, his employers quickly “allowed to work from his home in Beijing to listen to conversations primarily in English.”

The man also explained the nature of these eavesdrops and their content: “I listened to all kinds of conversations, including what sounded like violence… conjugal. It sounds crazy to me now.”

The employee then details the lack of security in the process: “I had access to all conversations from my personal computer with a simple name and , sent in clear text to each external contractor.” Seemingly simple identifiers with a unique for all employee s. Cybersecurity level, we’ve had better.

“Just the fact that I can already speak out about all this shows how lax the process was in protecting data.” adds the employee.

The not-so-private eavesdropping 5x3c30

In response to previous revelations by the Guardian and Vice about wiretaps, Microsoft announced the suspension of this program for Skype and Cortana on Xbox. The company had defended itself by explaining that its tapping always remained in-house and was only used to improve the performance of the software in question.

These revelations took place in August 2019, following a great wave of revelations about various software and devices that recorded s’ conversations. These included Google with its devices, Apple with Siri and Amazon with its assistant Alexa.

If all the companies have indicated that they have stopped or paused listening, who knows what other programs or connected objects might still be doing the same.

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