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Did Russian Hackers Crash Skype?

Posted by kdawson on from the flicking-a-domino dept.

An anonymous reader sends us to the www.xakep.ru forum where a poster claims that the worldwide Skype crash was caused by Russian hackers (in Russian). The claim is that they found a local buffer overflow vulnerability caused by sending a long string to the Skype authorization server. You can try Google's beta Russian-to-English translation, but the interesting part is the exploit code, and that's more readable in the original. The Washington Post reports that Skype has denied this rumor.

5 of 108 comments (clear)

  1. Re:In Soviet Russia... by r00b · · Score: 3, Funny

    In America you crash when using the phone.

  2. Re:The code snippet seems to be wrong by tftp · · Score: 5, Funny

    It actually executes, I tried the loop just now.

  3. Re:IN SOVIET RUSSIA by Arthur+Grumbine · · Score: 4, Funny

    And the long string was... "In Soviet Russia we are tired of all the mindless obligatory comments about the beloved Motherland."

    --
    Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
  4. Re:The code snippet seems to be wrong by svallarian · · Score: 5, Funny

    It's obviously a typo. Since it was Russian code, it was supposed to be xCCCP

    --
    I patented screwing your mom. But it got revoked for "prior art."
  5. Re:They hired DoS specialists against their own us by Smauler · · Score: 3, Funny

    I bet Slashdot wouldn't be prepared for all of its users connecting at the same time, either. But it needs not to. It is never going to happen (why should it?)

    I believe you are discounting the possibility of the actuality of Natalie Portman and Hot Grits.