Re: [PLUG] Linux Virus Writing HOWTO

[Mental Patient <mental@neverlight.com>]

On Thu, 2002-03-14 at 18:50, John Lavin wrote:
> > How do most viruses spread these days? Email. Who reads email and opens
> 
> Which makes me think since IM is all the craze; we even have IM on phones.  
> Anyone ever heard of an Instant Messenger attack?  I would assume that 
> possible.  An attack there may be cross-platform, but as you said - we aren't 
> supposed to be running as root...


There have been several documented buffer overflows in AOL's IM client.
Several of which could execute arbitrary code on the client side. Check
securityfocus. Fortunately, this is a bug in the clients implementation,
not the protocol. I do not use AOL's client, therefore I am not
vulnerable to that particular exploit. As yet, there haven't been any
gaim advisories to my knowledge. 


-- 
 
Mental (Mental@NeverLight.com)

I put a new engine in my car, but forgot to take the old one
out.  Now my car goes 500 miles per hour.  The harmonica sounds
*amazing*.
--Steven Wright

GPG public key: http://www.neverlight.com/Mental.asc

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