August 17, 2007

Yahoo Messenger has Vulnerability

Researchers at McAfee Avert Labs have found a vulnerability in the Yahoo Messenger system, which could possibly leave the user open to an outside attack.

News of the bug was first showning up on a Chinese language forum, which cover security issues, this alerted the McAfee researchers who began to check it out and unfortunately were soon able to reproduce the vulnerability on the instant messenger.

The problem is with the webcam controls that are used to run Yahoos web cam service, a user will get a webcam invite and that is the opening. This is not the same as the another problem that affected the webcam ActiveX controls, that was solved by a patch in June.

Instant messengers are becoming the frontline in these types of attack, purely because they have back door vulnerabilities, which is always going to be a problem.

Source [Enterprise Security]

Filed Under Uncategorized