New hole in AOL Instant Messenger

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Posted 10:12AM on Thursday, January 3, 2002

WASHINGTON - As AOL Time Warner engineers opened their presents and spent time with their families, a team of young hackers planned a holiday surprise: a major security hole in one of the company's flagship programs. The international group released a program that turns AOL's Instant Messenger into a key that could unlock many home computers. Now the hackers are being criticized by security experts for not giving AOL sufficient time to react. The group, founded by a 19-year-old Utah college student, discovered a security hole in AOL's Instant Messenger program that can let a hacker take control of a victim's computer, the company confirmed Wednesday. An AOL spokesman said the problem will be fixed soon, and users won't have to do anything. ``We have identified the issue and have developed a resolution that should be deployed in the next day or two,'' AOL's Andrew Weinstein said. ``To our knowledge, this issue has not affected any users.'' The problem affects the newest as well as many earlier versions of AOL's Instant Messenger program, which boasts more than 100 million users. Only the Windows version is at risk; Instant Messengers for Macintosh, Palm and other platforms are not. America Online Internet access service customers are safe as well. ``You could do just about anything: delete files on the computer or take over the machine,'' said Matt Conover, founder of the hackers' group, ``w00w00.'' Conover said w00w00 has more than 30 active members from 14 states and nine foreign countries. Until AOL's fix is released, Conover said, Instant Messenger users should restrict incoming messages to friends on their ``Buddy Lists.'' ``It will at least keep someone from attacking you at random,'' Conover said. But even that wouldn't help if the attack code were added to a virus that propagated without the victim's knowledge. AOL said it has given its users no advice in the interim. Conover, who attends Utah State University, said the group found the problem several weeks ago but didn't contact AOL until after Christmas. The group didn't get any response from AOL to an e-mail sent during the holiday week, he said, so w00w00 released details - and a program that takes advantage of it - to public security mailing lists less than a week later. The program released by w00w00 remotely shuts down a user's Instant Messenger program but could be modified to do more sinister things. That practice is under scrutiny by security professionals. While some independent researchers argue for a ``full disclosure'' policy and say software vendors are trying to hide their mistakes, many companies say users are better protected if companies have time to react. ``I think that's pretty dangerous,'' said Chris Wysopal of the security company AtStake, ``especially since they pretty much acknowledged that they hadn't gotten a response back from AOL yet.'' Russ Cooper, who moderates a popular security mailing list and works for the security firm TruSecure, said Conover's action was irresponsible because it helped hackers. ``I think it's better to provide details of the exploit and then let other people write the actual code,'' Cooper said. ``It lets the technical community have the information they need without letting idiots have the information they want.'' Conover said w00w00 set a New Year's deadline for sentimental reasons, because it was the anniversary of the group's last major security release. He defended the disclosure of the attack program because ``it means providing all the information we have available to the security community.'' AOL's Weinstein said the company would have appreciated more warning. ``We'd encourage any software programmer that discovers a vulnerability to bring it to our attention prior to releasing it,'' Weinstein said.