The 8-character bug crashing Skype everywhere and here's the fix

After Apple's popular iMessage platform last week, it's now Microsoft turn to experience some serious problems with its ubiquitous messaging/communication application, Skype.

Anyone can cause Skype to crash by typing "http://:" without the quotes in the message. Unlike what Apple users went through last week, this one doesn't actually cause your tablet to reboot.

Skype user Giperion reported it first on Skype's forums while some of us here at TechRadar experienced it first-hand with the error message "access violation at address 0153B3AC in module Skype.exe. Read of address 0000004".

"Clearing chat history not helps, because when skype download chat history from server, it will crash again." Giperion added in his/her description of the issue.

Will Google be next?

The issue affects Skype for Windows, Android and iOS but strangely enough, not OS X. Skype has confirmed the bug and has started to filter out offending characters according to Venturebeat.

Skype issued a statement a couple of hours ago saying "We are aware of a problem that was causing Skype clients to crash. Our engineering teams worked hard to resolve this issue, and have released updates for all impacted Skype platforms."

To solve that issue, users only have to download and install the latest version of Skype without the need, apparently to uninstall the application.

• Sources: Venturebeat, Skype

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