RIM: BlackBerry Messenger Caused BIS Outage

Well it’s finally over.  After more than 8 hours BlackBerry Internet Service is finally up again.  This was one of the worst BlackBerry outages we have seen and nearly all of the important functions of the BlackBerry were not working.  Users could not receive email, use third party apps that need Internet access or use the BlackBerry browser.  This outage also knocked out BlackBerry Messenger but it turns out that BBM may have caused the whole thing.  RIM has released the following statement which explains what happened.

RIM:

“A service interruption occurred Tuesday that affected BlackBerry customers in the Americas. Message delivery was delayed or intermittent during the service interruption. Phone service and SMS services on BlackBerry smartphones were unaffected. Root cause is currently under review, but based on preliminary analysis, it currently appears that the issue stemmed from a flaw in two recently released versions of BlackBerry Messenger (versions 5.0.0.55 and 5.0.0.56) that caused an unanticipated database issue within the BlackBerry infrastructure. RIM has taken corrective action to restore service.

RIM has also provided a new version of BlackBerry Messenger (version 5.0.0.57) and is encouraging anyone who downloaded or upgraded BlackBerry Messenger since December 14th to upgrade to this latest version which resolves the issue. RIM continues to monitor its systems to maintain normal service levels and apologizes for any inconvenience to customers.”

Download BlackBerry Messenger version 5.0.0.57

[via CrackBerry]