As Skype's outage continues,
speculation about its causes is gearing up.
In a
posting
on its website, Skype blamed the issues on a "deficiency in an algorithm within
Skype networking software. This controls the interaction between the user’s own
Skype client and the rest of the Skype network."
A later update informed users that the problems will likely continue
througout the day on Friday. Users started reporting problems with the free
internet calling service on Thursday morning.
Russian security vendor Positive
Technologies on Friday offered a different explanation,
claiming that it had
uncovered a Denial of Service (DoS) exploit that it prevented the service from
functioning.
"The program uses a standard Skype client to dial a special number," the firm
said in a posting on its website. "That call causes a denial of service on the
Skype server, which forwards to a backup server. The new Skype server also
crashes, and so on. This way the attack spreads with lightning speed over the
entire Skype peer-to-peer network."
Skype
denied
that it had fallen victim to a denial of service attack.
David Marcus, security research and communications manager with
McAfee, told
vnunet.com that the firm hadn't seen any
spikes in internet traffic that are common for denial of service attacks. He
suggested that the Russian message was a hoax.
Skype also denied that the problems were related to a scheduled update that
was performed on Wednesday.
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