Data Mining For Skype Forensics

The book I read to research this post was Data Mining For Skype Forensics by Ahmad Azab which is a very good book that I read on kindle unlimited. This is only a short book at around 70pages  and perhaps very expensive although of course on kindle unlimited you don’t pay the individual cost of e-books. This book isn’t just about Skype of which there are several different versions according to the release dates. It’s also about things like Bit Torrent and Kazaa to name but 2 protocols of VOIP. VOIP stands for voice over internet protocol and often calls to someone else using the same service are free regardless where in the world. A problem with hacking one of these calls which might be referred to as a man in the middle attack is there is a wide variety of protocols but also information is generally sent in packets. To be able to decode it you need the entire packet otherwise it just appears garbled. Also information is sent from one authorized user to another not down a specific port like in the early days of this technology when you listened to a port. These packets often don’t just contain voice information but can be part of an online gaming service or even P2P downloads. This needs separating and analyzing and the best systems are self learning almost like an artificial intelligence on a basic scale. With traditional phone calls it was simple to just put a wire tap attached to the receiver and then attached to something like a tape recorder. Many companies are interested in large scale data mining on everything from e-mails to social media sites. That’s why they are often free to subscribers. Skype is a free program that lets you make phone calls and the only additional equipment you usually need is a headset to plug into the computer. I did quite enjoy this book but would probably suggest reading it on kindle unlimited. I think the e-book retail price is forty something pounds.