ID: IRCNE2011121333
Date: 2011-12-04
According to "computerworld", An unpatched Yahoo Messenger vulnerability that allows attackers to change people's status messages and possibly perform other unauthorized actions can be exploited to spam malicious links to a large number of users.
The flaw appears to be located in the application's file transfer API (application programming interface) and allows attackers to send malformed requests that result in the execution of commands without any interaction from victims.
Victims are unlikely to realize that their status messages have changed and if they use version 11.5 of Yahoo Messenger, which supports tabbed conversations, they might not even spot the rogue requests, Botezatu said.
Until this vulnerability is fixed, users can protect themselves by configuring Yahoo Messenger to ignore anyone who is not in their Messenger list. However, this option will not prevent attacks from their current contacts.
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