Efim Bushmanov, a researcher, has announced on June 2nd, that he has reverse-engineered the Skype protocol, and has published it on his blog.

This news comes only a few weeks after Microsoft’s announcement of its acquisition of Skype for $8.5Bn.

Skype is the most popular VoIP platform. By the end of 2010, it was estimated to have 663 Million users.

According to him, he’s reversed the protocols from version 1.x to 4.x, including the compression algorithms.

I haven’t got time to go through the code, which I have just downloaded, but it will most likely be a good shot to look at.

If you’re interested, it is all available here:

• Binaries
• IDA
• Source

I guess it will only take a few days before Skype and its lawyers force Efim to take these files off. So if you’re interested, have a look now.