Skype Network Hacked

[BlackSun]

Skype provided more details about why its voice over IP service has been affected yesterday and today and it highlights the very important role of supernodes which act like the middlemen to connect Skype users.

 

The company's Peer to Peer telephony technology should have, in theory, allowed it to function without disruption even if computers go down. Clearly, the service did not buckle under pressure on the build-up to Christmas but then, it remains a mystery why so many supernodes were taken down almost simultaneously.

 

Supernodes represent a tiny fraction of hundreds of thousands of computers that form the Skype network; the company says of supernodes that "a small percentage of our users will hold a record reflecting the online presence of other users. When one user holds a record concerning the presence of other users, the former is called a supernode or directory node."

 

It is not clear how Skype chooses which computers should become supernodes and whether supernodes are constantly change (although we doubt it) but users are certainly not aware of the fact that their computers may have become a node directory.

 

 

Read more: http://www.itproportal.com/2010/12/23/skype-down-were-supernodes-hacked/

[Guest human]

Political cyber Battles vs. Internet cyber Battles, and it's implications on society.

 

That would be an interesting study.

[Guest LAW]

Everyone should agree that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 needs to be updated.

 

 

Skype - Blog Statement

 

I wanted to continue to update you on the status of the outage. We've been able to successfully stabilize Skype due to the dedicated supernodes deployed by Skype's engineering team. We're at roughly 90 percent of normal user volumes.

 

Audio, video and IM are running normally. But, a couple of our offerings, including offline IM and Group Video Calling, are not available yet, and we are working hard to restore them in due course.

 

We now understand the cause of the problem and we believe it was not caused by a malicious attack. But, we are still doing a full analysis and we will provide an in-depth post-mortem.

 

Nothing can make up for the missed experiences, but we're going to be sending our Pay As You Go and Pre-Pay users a Skype Credit voucher via email. The voucher can be used to give you approximately 30 minutes of free calling to landlines anywhere in the world.*

 

For our active subscribers, we will credit you with a week's extra subscription service. It may take a few days, but once implemented, it will be applied from your next renewal date.

 

Again, we sincerely apologize to all of you for this service outage and the inconvenience it has caused. We know how important it is for Skype to be available, so you can connect to your friends, family and colleagues.

 

Your can continue to stay tuned for more updates either on this blog or by following @skype.

 

* The exact number of minutes of calls you'll be able to make will depend on our rates for the country you want to call.

[Guest HUMAN]

I was really hoping that we could have avoided this.

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Everyone should agree that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 needs to be updated.

 

 

Skype - Blog Statement

 

I wanted to continue to update you on the status of the outage. We've been able to successfully stabilize Skype due to the dedicated supernodes deployed by Skype's engineering team. We're at roughly 90 percent of normal user volumes.

 

Audio, video and IM are running normally. But, a couple of our offerings, including offline IM and Group Video Calling, are not available yet, and we are working hard to restore them in due course.

 

We now understand the cause of the problem and we believe it was not caused by a malicious attack. But, we are still doing a full analysis and we will provide an in-depth post-mortem.

 

Nothing can make up for the missed experiences, but we're going to be sending our Pay As You Go and Pre-Pay users a Skype Credit voucher via email. The voucher can be used to give you approximately 30 minutes of free calling to landlines anywhere in the world.*

 

For our active subscribers, we will credit you with a week's extra subscription service. It may take a few days, but once implemented, it will be applied from your next renewal date.

 

Again, we sincerely apologize to all of you for this service outage and the inconvenience it has caused. We know how important it is for Skype to be available, so you can connect to your friends, family and colleagues.

 

Your can continue to stay tuned for more updates either on this blog or by following @skype.

 

* The exact number of minutes of calls you'll be able to make will depend on our rates for the country you want to call.