back to article Dodgy colon bug is a total pain in the butt for Skype users today

Adding a single colon to a web link is enough to kill Skype on your PC, Android and iOS device. Sending the characters http://: in a chat conversation via the software will cause the application to crash, and bomb all over again when restarted as the application will process the chat characters again before you get a chance to …

  1. Mage Silver badge

    We are doomed

    More systems are relying on SW.

    Never mind hackers or cyberwarfare. Companies can't even get simple bits of SW correct!

    Just an hour ago:

    Selected Eurosport Deutschland on Sat box.

    Hit OK to go from list to full screen.

    Sat box rebooted and erased all the channels on all the satellites!*

    [*the four stored ones, 28.2, 19.2, 13 and 9 E, not the ACTUAL satellites. That would require a modem, ODU, 4.8m dish etc ... I hope!]

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Linux

    Mmmm

    Might send that to wifey soon and see if the Linux version is affected or perhaps I'll just talk to myself or something 8)

  3. Efros

    Hmmm

    Bleurgh, I've just noticed Skype running in the background on a few of my machines that have automatic update installation enabled. Sneaky!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Hmmm

      Did you have Lync before? Lync is now Skype for business.

      1. Captain Scarlet
        Facepalm

        Re: Hmmm

        They only renamed it to OCS recently didn't they, JUST STAY WITH ONE FING NAME!

  4. Mephistro
    Devil

    So the app receives a colon...

    ... and it dies? Must be a trasplant rejection!

    1. Someone Else Silver badge
      Go

      Re: So the app receives a colon...

      The problem here is clear...it's not Microsoft's colon!

      Icon, because...well...just because....

      1. Mephistro
        Coat

        Re: So the app receives a colon...

        "The problem here is clear...it's not Microsoft's colon!"

        Well, while I dislike most of what MS has inflicted on IT in the last decades, I think that ripping off their colon is too extreme a punishment.

  5. Neil Alexander

    "tweaked its servers to simply blocks the transmission of the characters between users"

    I guess that rules out end-to-end message encryption, then.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Rename?

    Usual MS owned crap - call it Shite

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

  7. Old Handle

    Maybe Skype shouldn't be scrapping addresses you receive in the first place. If it just presented the text as sent, surely this couldn't happen. Even if it automatically turns addresses into links as a convenience, I find it unlikely it would fail that bad. I suspect it's actually trying to visit the addresses for goodness only knows what purpose.

    1. veti Silver badge

      I suspect it (like Chrome) is trying to prefetch the DNS entry associated with the URL, so that when the user does tap it, they can open it more quickly.

      Presumably in this case, it sees the rogue colon, thinks "aha, a port", then either grinds to a halt thinking about it, or tries to run with an explicit NULL in a place where no-one ever thought there could be one.

      1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

        tries to run with an explicit NULL in a place where no-one ever thought there could be one

        Yes, if by "no-one" you mean "the junior idiot who wrote that code".

        The HTTP URL specification is straightforward. Lexical analysis and parsing are extremely well-studied and well-understood, and typically studied by CS undergrads. Detecting when input doesn't match your grammar is trivial and should be done while parsing as a matter of course, falling out of the production rules. That's true whether it's a top-down parser or a bottom-up parser or something more exotic.

        There's no excuse for this bug. It's a clear indication that the person who wrote it was lazy or incompetent or both.

  8. Dan 55 Silver badge
    Devil

    Will somebody please make it stop

    Send a message with a colon, it crashes (what's that, the parser that CCs everything to Utah)?

    Send a message while the other person is offline, it gets there a day or two later.

    Call someone who's thoughtlessly let their mobile go onto the standby screen, it might or probably might not get through.

    The mobile version of Skype has another bug where a caller can listen but the phone stays on the standby screen with no visible display that someone's call has connected and is listening.

    Once a piece of MS software gains critical mass, it gains critical bloat.

    1. Message From A Self-Destructing Turnip

      Re: Will somebody please make it stop

      "The mobile version of Skype has another bug where a caller can listen but the phone stays on the standby screen with no visible display that someone's call has connected and is listening."

      What's that, a bug, you say? Oh yes I am sure you're quite right, just a little innocent bug, nothing to worry about at all really.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I really hope this affects "skype for business" because I know the first thing I'm doing when I get in the office.

    1. Mephistro
      Trollface

      "I know the first thing I'm doing when I get in the office."

      Citizen, you are officially requested to contact the authorities at your earliest convenience.

      Signed: Cortana

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        :( sadly it doesn't work

        1. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

          :( sadly it doesn't work

          The article says Microsoft is blocking it at the servers.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I guess that explains

    Why not so many people where visiting my website at port \0 on host \0. :(

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Facepalm

    The one day I use Skype, this happens. Update, talk, crash, update again. And unlike EVERY OTHER TIME, it didn't ask "how shitty was your user experience?" after the call.

    Where's the head-in-ass icon?

  12. Ru'

    Surely a colon issue like this could be fixed with a back-end patch?

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Keep history bug

    I have five users on this PC and we all use the same skype account. Keep history is set to no for all the users. If I skype from user1 and send a text message, as expected on closing the text is deleted. However if I log on to user2 the message is still there. HTF do they do that? Microsoft must be keeping the messages on their servers. Each user has to then delete the history manually.

    1. John Robson Silver badge

      Re: Keep history bug

      Of course they keep it on the server - you think delete means anything more than "remember this message in a filter file for this user"?

      At most it would be "add the 'deleted' flag to this message"

  14. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    FAIL

    So writing a URL parser is quite tricky for a software company.

    I guess they don't teach that sort of thing in CS degree courses then?

    1. akeane
      Facepalm

      Re: So writing a URL parser is quite tricky for a software company.

      The thing a CS course should ideally teach anyone is _not_ to cobble together a parser by hand, but use the tools available; which generate the code for you...

      1. John Smith 19 Gold badge
        Unhappy

        @akeane

        "The thing a CS course should ideally teach anyone is _not_ to cobble together a parser by hand, but use the tools available; which generate the code for you..."

        My point exactly.

        YACC and Lex (or Flex and Bison) should be the first port of call. At this point you've got a working parser that can serve as a model for a hand crafted one if you simply must have the fastest possible system.

        I get the impression that hand crafted parsers are like home brew encryption algorithms. Occasionally needed but much better avoided most of the time.

      2. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

        Re: So writing a URL parser is quite tricky for a software company.

        The thing a CS course should ideally teach anyone is _not_ to cobble together a parser by hand, but use the tools available

        Generally, yes, though in this case the lexical requirements and grammar are so simple that it wouldn't take significantly more time to write a proper dedicated-purpose URL lexer/parser, given a reasonably competent language and a reasonably competent programmer who understands common parsing techniques.

        Of course, Kids These Days would probably try to do the whole thing with EREs1 and screw it up anyway.

        1Which is possible, of course. REs themselves are equivalent to DFAs and so would suffice to handle the lexing, as long as the implementation has output (not just matching) capability. ERE families have various degrees of recognition power, but usually they're at least equivalent to PDAs, so they can parse LL(1) languages. It's just not a particularly good idea.

  15. Disko
    Joke

    Sent!

    to everyone in my contact list. Cue peace and quiet for the foreseeable future.

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