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I use Skype at work though sometimes for personal use and I am worried anyone can sniff network packets and find out what I'm typing or maybe the network admin can read conversations on the port Skype uses. How secure is Skype? Can I make it safer by forcing SSL encryption, if so how would I do it by using my works network proxy?

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Maybe you shouldn't be saying bad things about your boss at work? Dunno about Skype, but I know my bosses can read all my emails. – Mark Jun 23 '10 at 18:28
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No, its not about my work, just general private conversations with friends. We have a nosey network admin too. Email is standard, by law employee email monitoring is allowed in exceptional circumstances so I would never use my work Email for personal use but my Skype account was a personal one prior to me starting there. Anyone know exactly how secure it is and how to use SSL? – David Jun 23 '10 at 18:31
They probably can't rad your skype messages but they can install a key-logger and see everything you type that way. – Nifle Jun 23 '10 at 18:39
Yep, as well as the keylogger, scheduled screencapture, etc you also (probably) have a record of all your conversations in the Skype Chat History - I just searched my skype data folder for a few random phrases from some chat history and found the record - not pretty text, but some sort of DB that stores plaintext values along with contextual info (delivery, date/time, etc I guess). Definitely not a good idea to "Feel safe" unless the machine is well under your control. – Tao Jun 23 '10 at 22:50
If someone can access your machine, he can read your history using Skype history viewer apps. Example: nirsoft.net/utils/skype_log_view.html – Halil Özgür Jan 11 at 8:05

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up vote 5 down vote accepted

Skype's protocol is pretty secure by itself, it isn't intercepted and/or decrypted by regular packet sniffers.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype#System_and_software

Skype is a secure communication; encryption cannot be disabled, and is invisible to the user. Skype reportedly uses non-proprietary, widely trusted encryption techniques: RSA for key negotiation and the Advanced Encryption Standard to encrypt conversations.

More elaborate information about Skype protocol security can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype_security

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Uncrypted? Did you mean /en/crypted? – Blacklight Shining Sep 27 '12 at 15:05
@BlacklightShining Nope, as a matter of fact, it was supposed to be *de*crypted! But thanks! – BloodPhilia Sep 28 '12 at 12:18
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Did a google search on this: "skype security evaluation"

http://www.anagram.com/berson/skyeval.pdf

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Published on 18 Oct 2005... – Halil Özgür Jan 11 at 8:07
up vote 5 down vote

Unfortunately Skype protocol is closed. So there's no telling if they inserted a backdoor or not. Many people have tried to reverse engineer and analyze it, but that's not foolproof because Skype could easily add something in the future unannounced, and most users would update it.

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which is shorthand for "whatever security Skype claims for its software is unverifiable". – quack quixote Jun 23 '10 at 19:38

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