[Intrusions] UDP traffic on port 48864

[Kyle Maxwell]

On 9/30/05, Andrew Daviel <andrew at andrew.triumf.ca> wrote:
>
> I don't recall I got anything from Skype. I also don't recall this being
> explained in the EULA when installing the application.
>
> This somewhat annoys me; Skype are stealing our bandwidth (which we have
> to pay for) without, it seems, asking. We had a similar argument with
> a streaming audio service (which was much much worse), which was using
> user's PCs as rebroadcasters if they had clicked "LAN" for their
> Internet connection, ending up with maybe 10x the nominal traffic, and a
> potential financial hit, if
> someone left the application running over the weekend.
>
> Not that I've anything against P2P per se, if it's explained what you are
> getting into. BitTorrent for Linux does this, I think - "please be nice
> and leave it running for a bit after you have your file".
>

Hmm, well, you may recall that many P2P file-sharing networks operate in a
very similar fashion (think Gnutella). Also, from the Skype EULA:

4.1. Permission to utilize Your computer. In order to receive the benefits
provided by the Skype Software, You hereby grant permission for the Skype
Software to utilize the processor and bandwidth of Your computer for the
limited purpose of facilitating the communication between Skype Software
users.

It could be more prominently featured, but I don't believe I've seen any
reasonably technical discussion of Skype that didn't discuss this aspect of
their architecture, so I don't think it's particularly hidden.

--
Kyle Maxwell
http://caffeinatedsecurity.com
[krmaxwell at gmail.com]