Skype Outage Caused by Microsoft Update

A two-day outage that left millions of Skype users unable to use the popular Internet phone service was caused by an abnormally high number of restarts after people had downloaded a Windows security update, the company said Monday.

In an update to users on Skype's Heartbeat blog, employee Villu Arak said the disruption was not because of hackers or any other malicious activity.

Instead, he said that 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," Arak wrote.

Microsoft Corp. released its monthly patches last Tuesday, and many computers are set to automatically download and install them. Installation requires a computer restart.

"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," Arak wrote.

Article

YAH

Thats Microsoft for You

Skype had an update This week

Skype 3.5.0.214

- change: Extras Manager updated to version 1.5.0.3

- bugfix: Skype sometimes crashed on receiving chat message

- bugfix: Skype sometimes crashed when handling mood message

- bugfix: Can't resume call after putting it on hold in some cases

- bugfix: Video mood and chat messages sometimes displayed wrong thumbnails

- bugfix: On call transfer dialogue blocked and deleted contacts were shown

- bugfix: Phone number on Outlook contacts was not shown

- bugfix: On rare occasions Voice Mail download failed

- bugfix API: Switching to silent mode took too long