SOLVED: Skype Uses Port 80 For No Reason
May 11th, 2009 | Published in Software | 5 Comments
I would like to warn everyone who uses Skype: beware of your chat/instant messaging client if you do any kind of web development on your computer, as Skype, for some very obscure reason, uses port 80 (yes, the standard HTTP port) to connect to whatever communication server it has to talk to in order to get you online.
Fortunately, there is a way to disable this unwanted behavior. Simply navigate to Tools -> Options -> Advanced Settings -> Connection and uncheck the “Use port 80 and 443 as alternatives for incoming connections“.
Disable port 80 in Skype configuration
While I appreciate the Skype developers’ effort to making this a configurable option, I still do not understand why on Earth they had to mess up with port 80 in the first place!
Anyway, this one was fairly easy to fix, although it did cost me some time to figure out what was happening and find a solution. There are many others that are way, way hairier to nail down.
Stay tuned!
July 10th, 2009 at 10:28 pm (#)
It is unbelievable that Sky pee developer can do such a mistake. Thank you Troy Larsen. I think they should take some lesson from you.
August 21st, 2009 at 4:29 pm (#)
Thank you for pointing out this vulnerability. I use Skype and I was totally unaware of such a problem. I plan on fixing the vulnerability right away.
Cheers!
October 9th, 2009 at 6:50 pm (#)
Skype developers are human & they can make mistakes, but the thing is they never identified it or changed it. Thanks for pointing out this mistake, I will fix my skype & check all other messaging clients if it is enable in the connection menu. .
March 25th, 2010 at 5:25 pm (#)
OK, I use Skype but I also use a firewall, I don’t want to mess with it if I don’t have to. Will a fire wall help protect me from any odd goings on or should I change the port anyways?
August 18th, 2010 at 1:18 am (#)
Hi Troy,
This happened to me as well. I was wondering why WAMP wasn’t working, turned out Skype was commanding port 80! They should have not turned this on by default! What purpose does it serve anyway?
Rick Ong