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Skype dumps system BIOS.

  • 10-02-2007 2:30am
    #1
    Duffman
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,248 ✭✭✭


    I'm a long time user of Skype and thought attention should be drawn to a worrying aspect of the program's behaviour on Windows systems.

    Reported on Slashdot among other places recently:
    "Myria at pagetable.com, among others, noticed that Skype reads the machine's BIOS code on startup. This probably would've gone unnoticed if the operation didn't fail on 64-bit windows. From the post: 'It's dumping your system BIOS, which usually includes your motherboard's serial number, and pipes it to the Skype application. I have no idea what they're using it for, or whether they send anything to their servers, but I bet whatever they're doing is no good given their track record... If they hadn't been ignorant of Win64's lack of NTVDM, nobody would've noticed this happening.'"
    .


    Regardless of what they're actually using this information for it means that lots of private information could theoretically be obtained about users.

    The movements of a laptop user might be recorded, for example, by matching connections to Skype by the machine to different IP addresses used, even if a different account is used each time.

    After some poking around online I've discovered that the "skypePM.exe" process is responsible for accessing the BIOS. This is the new "Extras" or plugin system in the latest Skype client.

    If this bothers you, you can safely delete the the plugins folder in your Skype directory. Skype will continue to work fine but the "skypePM.exe" process won't load and the "do more" plugins interface in the tools menu will be greyed out. Apart from anything else, it wastes a whole lot of RAM.

    Just thought everyone should be aware of this. It's not necessarily malign behaviour but good to know nevertheless.


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