This week, a security researcher revealed such a profound flaw in the Skype messenger of the tech giant Microsoft that in order to fix it, it would be necessary to rewrite its code from scratch. However, the security researcher has already notified the tech giant Microsoft in September 2017.
The company now says that the crash does not affect the latest version of Skype for desktop, released in October. The tech giant Microsoft just forgot to mention one detail: it was distributing the old version until a few days ago.
The vulnerability was discovered by Stefan Kanthak and involves “DLL hijacking” in the Skype for Windows installer. According to the tech giant Microsoft, this affects versions 7.40 and earlier.
Version 8 does not have this bug. It brings a new look to Skype, with colourful gradients in message balloons, support @mentions, reactions with emoji during video calls, among others.
A lot of people did not approve these changes, preferring the old design. Until last Tuesday (13), the official download page included the option “Download the classic version of Skype”. It was version 7.40 with the installer’s security flaw.
However, the link to the classic version has been silently removed in recent days. But, the real fact is that the links were not yet been removed from the tech giant Microsoft’s servers.
Skype 7.40.0.104 is likely the last classic version we'll see. Get a copy here before it's gone. https://t.co/M7em1Ly5VW
— Rafael Rivera (@WithinRafael) February 16, 2018
It is worth noting that Skype 8.x – with the new design – is available for Windows 7, Windows 8/8.1 and Windows 10 build 1507 or 1511, released in 2015.
If you have the Windows 10 Anniversary Upgrade (build 1607) or later, the installer will display an error message and will take you to the Microsoft Store to install/upgrade the UWP version.
Meanwhile, version 7.4 – with the old look and security flaw – can be installed on any build of Windows 10.
So, what do you think about this? Simply share all your thoughts and opinion in the comment section below.