Advisories

One More Instant Messenger Makes You Vulnerable

AOL Instant Messenger security flaw

By Bogdan Popa, Security and Search Engines Editor

14th of September 2007, 07:41 GMT

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Today's online instant messengers challenge one another with new functions and abilities that lure new users to their products and win the competition. SecurityFocus reports a new security flaw in AOL Instant Messenger which

might allow an attacker execute malicious codes in order to take the control of the computer. Basically, a malicious person might try to exploit this vulnerability to open the system for new and more dangerous attacks which could give him administrator privileges. According to the report, AOL Instant Messenger 6.1.41.2 is the version affected by the flaw but other releases might also include this issue.

"AOL Instant Messenger is prone to a remote script-code-execution vulnerability. An attacker may leverage this issue to have arbitrary script code execute in the notification window of an unsuspecting user. This may help the attacker launch other attacks. AOL Instant Messenger 6.1.41.2 is vulnerable; other versions may also be affected," SecurityFocus wrote in the notification. "An attacker can exploit this issue using AOL Instant Messenger or another compatible chat client."

At this time, there is no solution available for this security flaw so you should wait for a future release prepared by the parent company in order to remain secure.

AOL Instant Messenger is not the only chat tool affected by more or less critical security flaws. Yahoo Messenger for instance, was one of the applications which were continuously kept on the first page of the security companies as they discovered new holes every once in a while. However, the Sunnyvale company Yahoo managed to patch the flaws in no time so it often avoided successful exploitations of the glitch.

As you probably know, you can download the latest version of AOL Instant Messenger for free straight from Softpedia using the following link. Also, keep an eye on our website to find out when a new version is released in order to patch the flaw.

TAGS:

aol | messenger | aim | security | flaw

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