These Eight Characters Crash Skype

Users have found a rather interesting bug in the popular voice and video calling application, Skype. The problem (now fixed in an update) caused skype to crash when you sent “http://:” via an instant message.

Once the message has been sent, if you re-open Skype – it will instantly crash again because it is in the chat log.

The bug has so far been discovered on Windows, Android and Ios. However, it doesn’t have an effect on Skype for Mac or Skype on Windows 8 (the metro interface application). Several users commented on the Skype forums and stated:

“clearing chat history not helps, because when skype download chat history from server, it will crash again.”

On some platforms, Skype now filters out the offending characters, yet it doesn’t work on all platforms and the characters still crash the application.

Microsoft have now fixed the bug and issued the following statement on their forums:

“Hello everyone

We are aware of a problem that was causing Skype clients to crash.  Our engineering teams worked hard to resolve this issue, and have released updates for all impacted Skype platforms. “

To resolve the issue, they suggest that you download the latest version of skype from www.skype.com/download and install it on your device. You don’t need to uninstall the old version first though.

Thank you to VentureBeat for providing us with this information

Images courtesy of Skype