Skype: Lights Out For 2 Days
Lots of Skype users aren’t buying the story that Skype went down last week due to user updates of their Microsoft Windows program. There are lots of theories out there wondering if it was a hack, and if so, are Skype user’s machines at risk?
Read Gregg Keizer’s report over at ComputerWorld.com for interesting reasons put forth by experts on why Skype’s “Windows Update Story Doesn’t Fly”. After reading Greg’s article, then read Skype’s official answer that was posted on their website….
Here’s what happened according to Villu Arak, over at Skype’s Heartbeat Website,
On Thursday, 16th August 2007, the Skype peer-to-peer network became unstable and suffered a critical disruption. The disruption was triggered by a massive restart of our users’ computers across the globe within a very short timeframe as they re-booted after receiving a routine set of patches through Windows Update.
The high number of restarts affected Skype’s network resources. This caused a flood of log-in requests, which, combined with the lack of peer-to-peer network resources, prompted a chain reaction that had a critical impact.