[roger_smith]

This may be common knowledge for some who regularly use skype. I recently learned about this after doing a security audit and figured I would share it.

Skype is a widely used program for communication, be it instant message, voice call, or video. When you install Skype on your system, it chooses a port above 1024 to use. However, Skype also binds to port 80/443 as an "alternative" port option. This is kinda silly, especially if you intend to use the same system with Skype as any type of web server. IIS/Apache also bind to port 80/443, to service HTTP and HTTPS traffic respectively. If you have Skype installed, and you try to run Apache/IIS, you will get errors indicating the port is already in use.

This can be disabled within the Skype settings. I recommend everyone who utilizes Skype and doesn't need the "alternative" ports (most everyone I'm sure) should disable the port 80/443 binding.

To disable:

Open Skype, click Tools, click options, click Advanced on the left panel, click Connection under advanced



Uncheck the "Use port 80 and 443 for additional incoming connections"

Restart Skype

Profit


It's a simple thing to "fix", but I personally feel it shouldn't even be an issue in the first place. Please note, I have not tested this on a Linux or Mac system, so the issue may exist in those systems as well (very likely).

Hope this helps!

[Oni]

Hahaha, I can imagine that would be quite annoying. Fortunately, I never host stuff on my own machine.

[Eclipse]

This is a pretty useful tutorial. I did this around a year back when I was learning PHP. I installed XAMPP but it didn't work. After some research I realized that it was Skype. It's a pretty stupid thing on their part.

[roger_smith]

One thing to keep in mind is that this would impact internal network as well. Say someone wanted to run a basic web server to host internal-network-only content, same issue applies. Or, like @Eclipse pointed out, setting up a test bed for web development.

I also have a separate machine to host most of my stuff on my internal network, but for those who only have 1 or 2 systems, this could be a real annoyance. Also, in the case of a network audit, finding port 80/443 open within a network that should have NO HTTP/HTTPS servers can be incredibly stressful... lol