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Typing 'http://:' Into a Skype Message Trashes the Installation Beyond Repair
An anonymous reader writes: A thread at the Skype community forums has brought to light a critical bug in Microsoft's Skype clients for Windows, iOS and Android: typing the incorrect URL initiator http://: into a text message on Skype will crash the client so badly that it can only be repaired by installing an older version and awaiting a fix from Microsoft. The bug does not affect OS X or the 'Metro'-style Windows clients — which means, effectively, that Mac users could kill the Skype installations on other platforms just by sending an eight-character message.
http://community.skype.com/t5/Windows-desktop-client/Skype-Fix-for-crashes-caused-by-bad-URL/td-p/3997463
I'm not even sure I've heard of an error condition which required a full uninstall.
I can guess why and I doubt an uninstall would help.
All you really need to know is that Skype saves conversations and redisplays them when it starts. So you send someone http://:, that triggers the bug, and on restart, it reloads the conversation and crashes again.
If that's the case, a reinstall won't help, because Skype will just re-download the missed messages and reencounter the bad URL and reenter the crash loop.
(Presumably the bug is that they see the second ":", decide it's the start of a port, and leave the hostname uninitialized, causing a crash.)
Full uninstall does not fix it. The message crashes Skype just by being in your chat history. Your chat history is stored in the cloud so you can't delete it!
The only person who can delete it is the sender (assuming they didn't crash themselves). So if it was malicious you're screwed until MS fixes the bug and pushes out an update for the client over Windows Update (at least the good news is they can do this, now).
Isn't the history stored on their server? In that case you're SOL.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Yep.
First thing a new installation of Skype does is download every single message you've received for the past several months, I think.
I haven't tried deleting a history file (they're actually SQLite databases) but I think the same thing happens in that case: Skype sees that it isn't up to date on messages and redownloads them.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
FTA: Update on June 3: Skype has fixed the bug, and in under than 24 hours no less. “We are aware of a Skype issue and have rolled out updates for all impacted products,” a Skype spokesperson told VentureBeat.
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