[ISN] Why Hotmail could spread viruses even faster than Outlook

From: William Knowles (wkat_private)
Date: Sat Jun 02 2001 - 00:18:17 PDT

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    http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/8/19388.html
    
    By John Leyden
    Posted: 01/06/2001 at 17:21 GMT
    
    A flaw in the web-based email services run by the likes of Yahoo! and
    Hotmail makes them conduits through which mass mailing email viruses
    can rapidly spread over the Internet.
    
    That's the serious warning contained in a posting to the BugTraq
    security mailing list by a security researcher who said that
    cross-site scripting vulnerabilities make it possible to replicate
    Melissa-type worms through Web mail services.
    
    To exploit the vulnerability an attacker would send an email to a
    victim, within which is a link to a service provider's own server.
    This link would contain Javascript that executes when the page is
    loaded and opens a window that could navigate through the victim's
    inbox, sending messages with the malicious link to every email address
    it finds in the inbox.
    
    The trick of this exploit is that since the malicious Javascript
    executes inside a page from the mail service's own server, no
    domain-bounding error is triggered when the Javascript is controlling
    the window with the victim's inbox.
    
    Although the exploit requires a user to click on a link, the fact that
    a malicious email comes from a trusted source and contains a link to a
    familiar, trusted server works in favour of any worm created which
    makes use of the security loophole.
    
    The vulnerability was discovered by a white-hat hacker called Matt
    Parcens who has posted an advisory on the issue and the steps that
    need to be taken to address the issue here.
    
    Both Yahoo! and Hotmail were notified of the issue on May 23 but it's
    not known if a fix has been put in place, or which other services
    might be affected.
    
    Jack Clark, European product manager at Network Associates, whose
    McAfee division provides the antivirus software used by Hotmail said
    that the threat looks "plausible" and that its researchers were
    investigating the issue with a view to developing a fix.
    
    He questioned the motives of Parcens in posting details of the
    vulnerability so soon after notifying the firms involved which he
    compared to trying the locks on various door and then posting details
    of whose doors were left open on the Internet.
    
    [Yahoo/Hotmail Advisory:  
    http://www.sidesport.com/webworm/cl_advisory.html ]
    
    
    
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