AOL Warns Of Another Instant Message Vulnerability

AOL Time Warner is advising users of its ICQ instant messaging program to upgrade to the most recent version of the software because another security hole has been discovered in the voice, video, and games feature for versions prior to 2001b.

The latest security hole is almost identical to the flaw found earlier this month in AOL Instant Messenger. An attacker can send a specially crafted data packet, which will cause a buffer overflow, the digital equivalent of a bucket overflowing, which would enable the attacker to run a code of his choice on the target system.

For more information and a fix, see: web.icq.com/help/quickhelp/1,,117,00.html. ICQ version 2001b was released in October. The ICQ chat service is estimated to have more than 125 million users.