[Novalug] chat security??

[Nick Danger]

Mackenzie Morgan wrote:
> On Sunday 22 February 2009 16:24:45 Jon LaBadie wrote:
>> But, in addition to security of your messages, what about
>> downloadable infections.  Have the chat clients (or servers)
>> been a vector for any types of malware?
> 
> AIM worms used to be very common.  They'd infect your AIM client or AOL 
> session and send spam links to drive-by download sites to your "buddies" so 
> that their AIM clients would be infected too.  I haven't heard of any for 
> years though.
>

mIRC used to have piles of warnings, i think xchat (windows) did too.
AIM is always having issues. We used to tell people "Dont click the
link!" referring to the problem of getting a link from a friend,
clicking it and getting infected (and sending that link to all your
friends at the same time) They still go around regularly, and I still
have issues at work cleaning up after them. Personally I use Pigin on
Linux and Windows these days and can be found on aim,yahoo,msn and IRC
(#SCOSUG, and #LINUXJOURNAL under freenode.net) and I find it a really
useful tool for both work and personal.

Nick