Glitch causes Skype apps on iPhone, iPad, Android and Windows to crash and permanently lock up

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

Microsoft’s Skype chat service is vulnerable to a simple booby-trapped text message that causes the app to enter a crash loop that permanently breaks the app on iPhone, iPad, Android and Windows.



Reminiscent of Apple’s iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Mac crash bug, the Skype vulnerability is caused by a much simpler and more common text string “http://:”.

The text string, which could easily be sent in error when attempting to manually enter a web address, causes the app on the recipient’s device to crash without displaying the message.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Booby-trapped text message crashes an iPhone Skype app sent via a Mac.

If the message was sent from a Skype app on a vulnerable device, the sender’s Skype will also crash and suffer the same ill effects. Skype for Mac and Skype for Windows 8.1 do not seem affected.

Skype said it was aware of the problem and was working on a solution.

During testing, the Skype for Mac app sent two of the booby-trapped text messages, but subsequent attempts to replicate the crash failed to send. It is possible Skype has stopped the messages going through.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Skype message crashing Android app on send.

The Skype apps pull a history of chat messages on startup and login, which means that deleting and uninstalling the app cannot solve the issue.

Users affected by the bug can get around the issue by asking the sender to delete the message, or by sending a series of photos or messages to push the booby-trapped text into the archive.

Apple’s iPhones, iPads and the Apple Watch have been plagued by a “text message of death” that crashes Apple’s devices when sent via Messages and a variety of other apps including Snapchat and Twitter.

The iPhone crash, which has still not been fixed a week on from its discovery, is caused by a bug within a core system common to all of Apple’s devices that handles text. When presented with non-Latin characters in a specific sequence – including those from Arabic, Chinese and Marathi – the CoreText system chokes, causing it to fail and bring the entire operating system to a halt.

Skype’s bug is not caused by the same system. Instead it is likely to do with the web address handling system choking on “http://:”, which is not a valid URL.

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