bugtraq - Re: Skype Network Remote DoS Exploit

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Message-Id: <200708201739.l7KHdE3i001451@faron.mitre.org>
Date: Mon, 20 Aug 2007 13:39:14 -0400 (EDT)
From: "Steven M. Christey" <coley@...re.org>
To: tecklord@...ocom.cv.ua, bugtraq@...urityfocus.com
Subject: Re: Skype Network Remote DoS Exploit

The outage being experienced by Skype was apparently due to massive
simultaneous reboots and reconnects after systems installed their
Windows patches.

from http://heartbeat.skype.com/2007/08/what_happened_on_august_16.html:

   The disruption was triggered by a massive restart of our users'
   computers across the globe within a very short timeframe as they
   re-booted after receiving a routine set of patches through Windows
   Update.

   The high number of restarts affected Skype's network resources.
   This caused a flood of log-in requests, which, combined with the
   lack of peer-to-peer network resources, prompted a chain reaction
   that had a critical impact.

I wonder how many other services are impacted by simultaneous Windows
scheduled updates.

Anyway... given that this was going on at the time the SecurityLab.ru
exploit was released, and the exploit only claims a DoS (and only
seems to make a series of requests to long URIs), was the exploit
actually effective, or was the "DoS" just part of the larger outage?

- Steve