My friend convinced me to switch to Tox, which he doesn't own the program and is in no way affiliated with it. Don't hate on me for what he is saying, if it is untrue. I told him if he typed up a thread I would post it on this forum for him. (he doesn't have any forum accounts)
Here is what he has to say:
One of my Skype friends just told me about an exploit in all versions of Skype which allow
anyone to run code on a machine who has accepted the hacker's add request. One thing I
want to tell you is to be wary of random people adding you on Skype. Another thing I would
like to let you know is that there is a better alternative to Skype called Tox. It's open-
source, and it doesn't include any Microsoft spying or exploits that take days to patch.
Open-source means that when a hacker finds an exploit, anyone can make a patch to the code
and submit it to the GitHub page of Tox, so it can be reviewed by the lead developer and
then patched into the main build (the .exe). This usually takes a few hours. With an app
that is proprietary, like Skype, it would take days to patch, because a small team of
developers wouldn't get to know about it until days after it affects everyone.
Sure, I may be shamelessly plugging Tox as an alternative, but what else will we switch to?
I believe we needed to switch anyway because why even let Microsoft read all our chats?
For anyone who wants to know about the exploit:
It's a zero-day that allows whoever is on your Skype friends list to run code on your
machine. It abuses the Skype daemon process (the part of Skype that keeps you online).
This is a serious exploit that goes undetected by anti viruses, as my friend tells me.
It's not well known yet because it just came out.
Other info:
My Tox I
Tox homepage - http://tox.im
To change your long ID into a short name: http://toxme.se
I[font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]t converts everything to lowercase, Seven@toxme.se won't work, but seven@toxme.se will work.[/font]
[font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]On the Tox homepage, download qTox, not uTox, it has lots of more features.[/font]
Here is what he has to say:
One of my Skype friends just told me about an exploit in all versions of Skype which allow
anyone to run code on a machine who has accepted the hacker's add request. One thing I
want to tell you is to be wary of random people adding you on Skype. Another thing I would
like to let you know is that there is a better alternative to Skype called Tox. It's open-
source, and it doesn't include any Microsoft spying or exploits that take days to patch.
Open-source means that when a hacker finds an exploit, anyone can make a patch to the code
and submit it to the GitHub page of Tox, so it can be reviewed by the lead developer and
then patched into the main build (the .exe). This usually takes a few hours. With an app
that is proprietary, like Skype, it would take days to patch, because a small team of
developers wouldn't get to know about it until days after it affects everyone.
Sure, I may be shamelessly plugging Tox as an alternative, but what else will we switch to?
I believe we needed to switch anyway because why even let Microsoft read all our chats?
For anyone who wants to know about the exploit:
It's a zero-day that allows whoever is on your Skype friends list to run code on your
machine. It abuses the Skype daemon process (the part of Skype that keeps you online).
This is a serious exploit that goes undetected by anti viruses, as my friend tells me.
It's not well known yet because it just came out.
Other info:
My Tox I
Tox homepage - http://tox.im
To change your long ID into a short name: http://toxme.se
I[font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]t converts everything to lowercase, Seven@toxme.se won't work, but seven@toxme.se will work.[/font]
[font=Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif]On the Tox homepage, download qTox, not uTox, it has lots of more features.[/font]