Wednesday, 16 August 2006

Yahoo! Mail Private Mailboxes Exposed to Hackers

A security vulnerability exposes Yahoo! Mail private mailboxes to hackers, Ynet has learned. A test conducted by Nir Goldshlager and Roni Bahar from the Israeli security company Avnet shows hackers may gain access to Yahoo!Mail users' mailboxes by sending an email message with a malicious code. According to a test conducted by Ynet, and without disclosing the process, a new email account was opened. According to ynetnews, an email message was sent to that mailbox along with an html file with the malicious code, as an attachment. Opening the tainted email on Internet Explorer undetectably sends the user's cookie to the hacker's server. The user is exposed to the vulnerability without having to download or open the html file.