VoIP company Skype experienced a massive outage due to a problem the company blamed on a deficient network software algorithm.
Skype Knocked Out By The Algorithm
Signing in to Skype has been impossible over the past day, leaving tens of millions of Skype users without access to the service.
Skype had completed some planned maintenance to the service earlier in the week. The problems began a few days later. Though Skype’s Heartbeat blog showed the communication services are working, it also noted the problems with logging in to the service.
ZDNet’s George Ou suggested the problems at Skype could be the result of a published exploit making the rounds on Russian forums:
If this is true, this sounds like the kind of low-cost non-brute force DoS (Denial of Service) attack that can bring down an entire service. Since Skype is still down, this may be a very plausible explanation.
Skype said it isn’t an attack causing the outage:
The Skype system has not crashed or been victim of a cyber attack. We love our customers too much to let that happen. This problem occurred because of a deficiency in an algorithm within Skype networking software. This controls the interaction between the user
