A claim that a group of researchers in China has successfully cracked the Skype protocol has set the blogosphere alight, but the company says there is no evidence that the software has been reverse-engineered.

We have no evidence to suggest that this is true. Even if it was possible to do this, the software code would lack the feature set and reliability of Skype, the company, headquartered in Luxembourg, said in a statement sent to eWEEK.

According to Charlie Paglee, CEO of VOIP (voice-over-IP) startup Vozin Communications, in Fremont, Calif., engineers at a small research outfit in China have cracked Skypes proprietary protocol to create a third-party application capable of connecting to Skypes 100 million users.

Paglee announced the news on his blog on July 14 and posted screenshots of Skype connecting directly to a rudimentary application. Paglee, who tested the connection during two voice calls with the Chinese group, noted that his IP address was 100 percent correct on the third-party software.