Millions hit as hackers take down Skype for 48 hours

A group of hackers have said they were behind a massive Skype crash that frustrated millions of users around the world, leaving them unable to log in, receive messages or make voice calls.

The Cyberteam gang made the claim on Twitter ( www.snipca.com/24766), saying it would next target Microsoft’s game-streaming service Steam.

It took Microsoft two days to fix the problems, which began at 7.01pm on Monday 19 June. The following afternoon Microsoft said it was “seeing improvements” in the service, but it took until 6pm on Wednesday 21 June for Skype to work fully again.

The crash mostly affected users in Europe, as shown by the map above from Down Detector ( http://downdetector. co.uk), which measures in real time when websites are offline, and when broadband companies are having problems providing internet access to customers.

Microsoft hasn’t said what kind of hack it was, but security experts have suggested it was a Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack. This is an attempt to knock a website offline by overwhelming it with internet traffic sent by botnets.

DDOS attacks can be devastating. The Dyn attack in October 2016 brought down much of America’s internet, including the sites of Twitter, Netflix and CNN, plus many others in Europe. Both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaigns were also targeted by DDOS hacks.

However, hackers can’t steal personal data during DDOS attacks, so Skype users don’t need to worry about their details falling into the wrong hands.

Until this crash the longest time Skype had spent offline was 15 hours in September 2015. Microsoft quickly apologised to users ( www. snipca.com/24781), blaming a “larger-than-usual configuration change”.