The Hindu Business Line : Instant messengers targets of hackers, warns Symantec

According to a 2005 IDC report, 28 million business users of enterprise instant messaging applications sent nearly one billion messages every day. IMs are also growing as the popular media choice of the Internet-hooked youth.

These innocuous chat software are future targets of malicious hackers, warned Symantec. "There will be an increase in phishing messages and malicious code distributed through instant messengers," said Mr Vishal Dhupar, Managing Director, Veritas Software Solutions, a Symantec India company.

Chat clients (example AOL, Yahoo! Messenger and Google Talk) use the SMTP protocol, a carrier that has many vulnerabilities. These can be used to propagate worms and viruses quickly across systems, said Mr Umang Bedi, Enterprise Sales Manager, Symantec India.

At present, the US (with 47 million broadband users) and China (which will have 500 million by 2010) are facing the brunt of security issues. In comparison, India has 1.7 million subscribers, which will grow to 12 million by 2009, informed Mr Dhupar.

Jabber also vulnerable

Corporate instant messengers such as Jabber, used within organisations over the LAN, are also vulnerable. Symantec has recommended the implementation of best practices to secure data from IMs. Most companies now dismiss IMs as harmless software, however, they belong to Web-based applications category, which has seen a 15 per cent increase to 69 per cent of all vulnerabilities reported to the firm. The message is clear — "be careful of your messenger", said Mr Dhupar. Another trend identified by the company is the rise of bot networks. Bots are programs that provide attackers with unauthorised control of a computer. Bot networks now link up to 10,000 individual infected PCs, said Mr Bedi. These can be used to launch denial-of-service (DoS) attacks on other broadband users. These networks, now even let on hire, distribute malicious code referred to as `ransomware' that offer users their service in return for a fee. There have not been any reported cases of these in India as yet. China, on the other hand, is suffering from an explosion of bot-infected PCs due to its rapid adoption of broadband, the report said.