IM Security Brief - Week of May 10
May 10, 2002
By Bob Woods
Minor Bug Can Crash AIM
We know it looks like we've been picking on America Online's AIM in the past week or so. We don't have any sinister plans to take down or embarrass AOL, or anything like that. It's just been the "luck of the draw," as it were.
With that in mind, we thought we'd mention a bug that will crash the AIM client. The bug, according to AOL Files, has only been tested with version 4.7 of AIM.
The client crashes when a person clicks on a link to add an AIM Buddy to his or her Buddy List. The link contains:
The way we see it, only someone who wants to mess with the mind of unsuspecting AIM users would want to use it. From what we can tell, it doesn't cause any permanent damage. And it doesn't appear to give entry into a user's computer by a malicious hacker.
The person who sent us this tip says he knows of a few people who've even had their computers crash because of the bug -- although we think those people were knowingly using the bug.
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