Malicious Mobile Code

Hacking Instant Messaging

Malicious hacking Instant Messaging means either attacking the medium itself or using it as a method to attack the computers attached to it. Attacking the medium means knocking other people off the chat network, taking control of a channel, joining a private chat, or causing enough disruption to a chat channel that the other participants simply give up. Attacking computers using IM merely as a transport medium involves moving viruses, worms, and Trojans onto remote computers and compromising their security.

Hacking AIM and ICQ

There are hundreds of web sites, mostly run by teenagers, offering hundreds of rogue hacking utilities to compromise AIM or ICQ.

Punters and busters

Many AOL- hacking utilities are aimed at knocking off other users from the chat medium. These programs are called punters. Punters generate hundreds of information inquiries to a legitimate user’s client, such as invitations to chat. The multiple invitations causes a window to open up for each request. This will either overwhelm the user’s local computer resources, or end up with them being disconnected from the server because of the congested traffic. The user is punted from the channel, and must rejoin to gain access. Some hackers have even developed anti-punters, which automatically respond to and close information requests, so that the system cannot be overwhelmed. Busters are programs that allow rogue hackers to gain access to a private chat even though they have not been invited. ...