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Skypeopensource2 – Skype client based on reversing Skype 5.5

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Re: Skypeopensource2 – Skype client based on reversing Skype 5.5

#101

Post by skypeopensource »

besselheim wrote: post #50

I remember seeing an earlier incarnation of this around five years ago; I'm very impressed with the author's dedication to this project. I don't know if it is still the case now, but I recall that earlier versions of Skype were quite heavily obfuscated and contained anti-debugging mechanisms. So it would have been quite an intricate reversing effort to get past these, on top of figuring out the protocol. Over time, M…

> I remember seeing an earlier incarnation of this around five years ago

Yes, its still up here: https://skype-open-source2.blogspot.com/

Re: Skypeopensource2 – Skype client based on reversing Skype 5.5

#102

Post by skypeopensource »

besselheim wrote: post #58
0xmohit wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I remember seeing an earlier incarnation of this around five years ago https://github.com/skypeopensource/skypeopensource

The site I recall was Blogspot rather than Github: https://web.archive.org/web/20110602182718/http://skype-open...

http://skype-open-source2.blogspot.ru/2016/09/first-in-world...

Re: Skypeopensource2 – Skype client based on reversing Skype 5.5

#103

Post by wolfgke »

janoc wrote: post #90
wolfgke wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it's not clean room, then there's probably copyright violations. This is the law in the United States. From the links given in the readme file the authors are probably from Russia.

Copyright applies in Russia too. There are bits and pieces straight "reused" from other software - by his own admission. So his claim that he is a sole copyright owner is patently false - this code could be trivially attacked as a derivative work. No sane person would touch it by a 10 foot pole.

I don't know much about Russian copyright law, but at least the idea of the German copyright law (Urheberrechtsgesetz) is very different from the US one. Here the central concept is the "Urheberschaft" (authorship; this implies that you have to be acknowledged as author) which cannot be sold, donated, refused etc. (as opposed to in the copyright law). The only thing that can be sold are the Nutzungsrechte (rights of use), which allow to redistribute the work and make money from it. Thus in Germany there exists for example no analogue to public domain work: Since Urheberschaft cannot be donated, one simply cannot put works under public domain, see for example https://www.sqlite.org/copyright.html

Re: Skypeopensource2 – Skype client based on reversing Skype 5.5

#104

Post by lootsauce »

Totally not negative on this but I'm not a Skype user so can someone please explain to me why anyone would want to go to all the effort to reverse engineer it? I get that its closed and should be open, I get that its security is in question but if you want a more secure communications platform I can't imagine Skype is the only way forward and must be reverse engineered. Why not contribute to an existing open source project?

Re: Skypeopensource2 – Skype client based on reversing Skype 5.5

#105

Post by cinch »

brownbat wrote: post #100

As a reminder: https://github.com/mumble-voip/mumble https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mumble_(software) I'm surprised the gaming chat programs don't get more crossover use. Well, I'm not surprised that a commercial project has a larger userbase than something that requires you to find a server. But I am surprised when, say, podcast hosts make jokes about lag or call quality on their Skype connections with guests. There…

skype still has the best echo cancellation (that i've tried). you don't even need to wear headphones. according to a Tox developer: there aren't any comparable open source libraries.

Re: Skypeopensource2 – Skype client based on reversing Skype 5.5

#106

Post by viraptor »

fulafel wrote: post #48
viraptor wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The magic values look ok to me. I mean, some values are known, some aren't - it's still early days. Hopefully more will be labeled / split up into components with time. But I agree that it would be dangerous to use now. And the author isn't a skilled VCS user or open source dev either. (comments say all rights reserved)

"all rights reserved" doesn't conflict with openness, it's a (now obsolete) technicality meaning you opt in to getting your copyright license enforced under an international treaty.

I meant the whole block not just this phrase. "Copyright (c) 2009 by VEST Corporation. All rights reserved. Strictly Confidential!" - that conflicts with openness. Or at least with assigning rights to other people.

Re: Skypeopensource2 – Skype client based on reversing Skype 5.5

#107

Post by eeZi »

brownbat wrote: post #100

As a reminder: https://github.com/mumble-voip/mumble https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mumble_(software) I'm surprised the gaming chat programs don't get more crossover use. Well, I'm not surprised that a commercial project has a larger userbase than something that requires you to find a server. But I am surprised when, say, podcast hosts make jokes about lag or call quality on their Skype connections with guests. There…

Another reminder: Jitsi Meet

https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet

Try it here: https://meet.jit.si/

It's a modern, WebRTC-based replacement for Skype, Google Hangouts and other video/audio conferencing solutions.

And it's great. The company I work for is now using it exclusively for meetings and telepresence. The echo cancellation is outstanding and you can even connect it to a SIP server. No client is required besides Google Chrome or Firefox. There's nothing that comes close to it in terms of sophistication and quality.

It works well for one-on-one and audio calls.

Re: Skypeopensource2 – Skype client based on reversing Skype 5.5

#108

Post by eeZi »

cinch wrote: post #105
brownbat wrote: post #100

As a reminder: https://github.com/mumble-voip/mumble https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mumble_(software) I'm surprised the gaming chat programs don't get more crossover use. Well, I'm not surprised that a commercial project has a larger userbase than something that requires you to find a server. But I am surprised when, say, podcast hosts make jokes about lag or call quality on their Skype connections with guests. There…

skype still has the best echo cancellation (that i've tried). you don't even need to wear headphones. according to a Tox developer: there aren't any comparable open source libraries.

Can confirm that Jitsi Meet works fine without headphones in Google Chrome. Google spent a lot of time optimizing WebRTC.

Re: Skypeopensource2 – Skype client based on reversing Skype 5.5

#109

Post by giancarlostoro »

brownbat wrote: post #100

As a reminder: https://github.com/mumble-voip/mumble https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mumble_(software) I'm surprised the gaming chat programs don't get more crossover use. Well, I'm not surprised that a commercial project has a larger userbase than something that requires you to find a server. But I am surprised when, say, podcast hosts make jokes about lag or call quality on their Skype connections with guests. There…

I try to push Mumble over Skype, the main issue with Mumble is that it's not as easy to get into. You spend too much time configuring your client, finding a server, etc. Things that should be fairly trivial. Then you may spend more time figuring out why you're not being heard, or why nobody's hearing you. Mumble is great but there's too much friction involved. I prefer Discord[0] because it's so easy to use by comparison, to test it you don't even need an account, you just run it from your browser. I just wish Discord had a Linux Client.

[0]: https://discordapp.com/

Re: Skypeopensource2 – Skype client based on reversing Skype 5.5

#110

Post by PieterH »

poizan42 wrote: post #91
PieterH wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disassembly by a team that results in new code written by the same team is not legal in any country that enforces copyrights. That includes the EU. Possibly excludes Russia and probably excludes China unless the owner is a large Chinese company. In fact I'd be surprised if this code isn't taken off GitHub by a DCMA from Microsoft, as soon as it hits their lawyers' radars.

> Disassembly by a team that results in new code written by the same team is not legal in any country that enforces copyrights. It's not illegal in itself. But you are easily opening yourself up to claims that the code you have written has been "tainted" by the disassembled code you have read and has therefore become a derivative work, which is going to be very to defend hard against. Also note that even if it is dec…

Thanks for correcting me.
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