Viruses/Worms News

Skype Trojan malware can secretly record VoIP calls

Friday, August 28, 2009

Security researchers have spotted attack code published on the web that could allow hackers to secretly record audio and video sent over the Skype VoIP service. The Trojan malware called Skype.Peskyspy records Skype calls and stores them as an mp3 file for later transmission.

The Trojan injects a dll component into a Skype process and then hooks the "send" and "recv" APIs in Skype to the Trojan's own custom functions, according to web security firm Sophos.

"This allows the Trojan to extract and save the audio and video data and send it back to the attacker," wrote SophosLabs researcher Richard Cohen on the company's blog.

Although Skype secures the data while it's being transmitted between callers, the Trojan can intercept the data at the sender or receiver end.

"In this case, you yourself can be secured to the hilt, but if the person you're talking to on Skype has a Trojan installed then it's still going to steal the words right out of your mouth," Cohen wrote.

The Trojan was discovered by a major internet security firm, which reported that the Trojan is being spread via email links and social engineering attacks in spam emails and messages, according to the Tech Herald.