RE: Possible AIM Hack?

["Jeff Britton, Monitored Security" <jeff.britton () monitoredsecurity com>]

completely different passwords.  I'm logging into the same account using 2 very different passwords as we speak.

-----Original Message-----
From: Benjamin Tomhave [mailto:falcon () secureconsulting net]
Sent: Tuesday, March 14, 2006 4:53 PM
To: Jeff Britton, Monitored Security
Cc: incidents () securityfocus com
Subject: RE: Possible AIM Hack?


AIM normalizes passwords - were your new passwords variants of old
passwords using non-alphanumerics or changes in capitalization?

On Tue, March 14, 2006 1:02 pm, Jeff Britton, Monitored Security said:
> Has anyone else even noticed that (at least in the older versions) you can
> use previous passwords to login?  As of right now, I can log into my AIM
> account with 3 different passwords...was wondering if anyone else noticed
> this too?
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: CISO [mailto:ciso () elitemail org]
> Sent: Tuesday, March 14, 2006 11:34 AM
> To: belka () att net; incidents () securityfocus com
> Subject: Re: Possible AIM Hack?
>
>
>
> The new edition of AIM has this issue because the product is still
> technically in BETA.
>
> The older edition of AIM typically doesn't have this problem.
>
> Remember that AIM is a free service so there are no real SLAs to end
> users unless you are using the enterprise edition of AIM.
>
> The inability to log on (authenticate) or create new accounts is because
> that piece is controlled from the same mechanism (servers).
>
> James
>
> On 14 Mar 2006 15:57:03 -0000, belka () att net said:
> > Here is the gist of what happened:
> >
> > March 8th, while using AIM, it logs me off.  When I try to log back in,
> > it tells me my password is incorrect.  When I try to rest the password,
> > I
> > receive no password rest message.  It is as if the hack changes the
> > account e-mail at the same time to prevent password rest.  Lastly, I
> > went
> > to create a new AIM account -- but without success.  The error message
> > tells me that the service is temporarily unavailable.  I tried from
> > several computers, and from different places, to no avail.  As of 09:11
> > CST (-6GMT) AIM will still not allow new accounts to be set up.
> >
> > I haven't seen any news from any source about an AIM hack, but I have
> > heard anecdotally from my college aged kids that several of their
> > friends
> > were also affected around the same time period and most have not been
> > able to establish new AIM accounts.
> >
> > Is any one else seeing any kind of similar activity/results surrounding
> > AIM?  Or am I just a victim of a series of unfortunate events?
> >
> > Thanks