A Canadian research group has alleged that Skype Internet text chats were being monitored by Hong Kong-based Tom Online.

The company, which maintains a joint venture with Skype, reportedly stored gigabytes of user data across eight servers.

The archived records included mobile phone accounts, mobile-phone text messages, and TOM-Skype usage information. In addition, the stored messages contained keywords linked to Taiwanese independence, political opposition to the Communist Party and Falun Gong.

Jennifer Caukin, a spokesperson for Skype, expressed concern over the "apparent security issue" and noted that Tom Online had "fixed" the flaw. Tom Group responded to the allegations in a separate statement by claiming that it adhered "to [the] rules and regulations in China where we operate our businesses."

The report, published by the Information Warfare Monitor and OpenNet Initiative–Asia, did not specify if the Chinese government was involved in the monitoring efforts. However, records found on unsecured Tom-Skype servers included an encryption key that could be used by government officials to unlock secure data.

The IT Examiner recently analysed potential security loopholes in Skype. According to security consultant J Prasanna, the application utilises RSA and AES encryption algorithms. Prasanna explained that a "honey pot type method" could be employed to "intercept this type of communication or to figure out some buffer overflow to crack the network." X

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