The following articles highlight security issues related to consumer IM services.

This software provides IT organizations a secure, internal alternative to these consumer IM and other managed services.

Just Another Worm on the IRC - May 16, 2003
http://www.atnewyork.com/news/article.php/2208241
" It can trigger a slew of harmful processes, including the ability to communicate with an IRC bot (Internet Relay Chat) and an AIM bot (AOL Instant Messenger). It was considered especially dangerous because it contained a backdoor that used mIRC (Inter Relay Chat) to communicate with a remote attacker and a keystroke-logger that recorded all keyboard strokes in a separate log file."

Bevy of new ICQ vulnerabilities surface - May 6, 2003
http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/05/06/HNaolicq_1.html
" Six security vulnerabilities in America Online's (AOL's) free ICQ Pro instant messaging client give attackers a number of new ways to gain remote control over machines running the software...problems in a variety of ICQ components, including features for receiving e-mail messages, displaying banner advertisements and GIF format images, and even in the code used to handle product feature upgrades."

Could Attack on DALnet Spell End for IRC? - January 24, 2003
http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/1573551
" For at least a month, distributed denial of service (define), or DDOS, attacks have been crippling DALnet, one of the world's largest Internet Relay Chat (define) networks, bringing it to its knees and raising the possibility that many hosting providers may refuse to host IRC servers at all. ...more service providers will quickly come to the conclusion that hosting an IRC server is a liability."

Microsoft Online Properties Go Dark Again, But Only For Some - January 10, 2003
http://www.internetweek.com/story/INW20030110S0005
" The Thursday problem was unrelated to the outage experienced by Messenger users on Monday, according to Microsoft. ...more than 40 percent of the Web was unable to access Microsoft's sites and online services."

MSN Messenger Users Cope with Spotty Service - January 6, 2003
http://www.instantmessagingplanet.com/public/article.php/1564811
" The outage impacted worldwide users of MSN Messenger, Microsoft's instant messaging application, rendering it impossible to log on to the network. It also affected Windows Messenger, the messaging application built into Windows XP. Using [MSN Messenger] for anything mission-critical or confidential is as reckless as relying on a Hotmail account for business mail."

Toward a More Secure 2003 - Business Week Online - December 31, 2002
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/dec2002/tc20021231_1450.htm
" Once a relative haven, instant messaging has recently become a target for spammers seeking new outlets. According to e-mail consultancy Ferris Research, IM spammers works off lists of addresses freely traded on the Internet. That coverage hole will force many corporations to consider moving their IM users onto private messaging systems not accessible to the public Internet."

Flirting on the Company Dime - December 13, 2002
http://www.instantmessagingplanet.com/public/article.php/1557241
" Increasingly, company employees are continuing their off-hours socializing using on-the-job technology. A recent study found that 52 percent of single office workers confessed to using IM during the business day. ...estimates by analyst group IDC place the U.S. workplace IM user base at close to 70 million users -- the numbers of employees using instant messaging to date while at work could be significant."

New Worm Spreads via MSN Messenger - October 11, 2002
http://www.instantmessagingplanet.com/security/article/0,,10818_1480511,00.html
" A worm writer or group or writers is using Microsoft Corp.'s MSN Messenger network to try to dupe unsuspecting users into downloading a malicious file from the Internet."

Yahoo announces IM product for business users - October 11, 2002
http://www.informationhighways.net/news/news1.html
" Licenses will be available at US $30 per user [per year], starting early next year."

Half of IM Users Accept Downloads - September 26, 2002
http://www.instantmessagingplanet.com/security/article/0,,10818_1470691,00.html
" Here's the scary part -- 15% of all IM users said they accepted file transfers from unknown parties. These people are just asking for viruses, worms and other dangerous programs to invade their computers."

IM Users Being Duped into Security Laxes - August 9, 2002
http://www.instantmessagingplanet.com/security/article/0,,10818_1444011,00.html
" Hackers are increasingly attacking systems through instant messaging, says Art Manion, Internet Security Analyst at CERT, a federally funded high-tech research and development center at Carnegie Mellon University. ''We have reports of tens of thousands of systems being compromised in this way,'' says Manion."

Holes Still Linger in Yahoo Messenger - June 6, 2002
http://www.instantmessagingplanet.com/security/article/0,,10818_1331311,00.html "The problem is bad enough that it might permit a remote attacker to execute arbitrary script and HTML in the Internet security zone of the local machine."

Security Bugs Squashed in Yahoo IM - May 29, 2002
http://www.instantmessagingplanet.com/security/article/0,,10818_1146281,00.html "The net impact is to allow a relatively simple opportunity to hijack users' YIM client outright, and use it to attack or intrude into YIM users supposedly private information systems,"

Minor Bug Can Crash AIM - May 10, 2002
http://www.instantmessagingplanet.com/security/article/0,,10818_1107731,00.html "...we thought we'd mention a bug that will crash the AIM client."

Microsoft, AOL IM Flaws Uncovered - May 9, 2002
http://www.eweek.com/article/0,3658,s=712&a=26673,00.asp "Microsoft Corp.'s two instant messaging clients are vulnerable to a buffer overrun attack that enables an attacker to execute arbitrary code on affected machines. AIM has a major security vulnerability in all stable versions dating back to 4.2, according to an advisory released Monday by w00w00 Security Development."

AOL's AIM Still Has Overflow Bug - May 7, 2002
http://www.instantmessagingplanet.com/security/article/0,,10818_1038481,00.html "A security problem in AOL Instant Messenger found earlier this year still exists -- it just affects a different mechanism than before"

AIM Today Gets Hacked - April 29, 2002
http://www.instantmessagingplanet.com/security/article/0,,10818_1024491,00.html "Pornography and profanity filled the Entertainment section of AOL Instant Messenger's content area last Saturday"

AOL's AIM Puts Browser Security in Danger - April 23, 2002
http://www.instantmessagingplanet.com/security/article/0,,10818_1014151,00.html "Here's another reason to look wearily at installing a public IM client on a LAN- connected PC -- the AIM client secretly forces an unsafe change to Internet Explorer browsers"

Spammers target IM accounts - March 12, 2002
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-857637.html
" I think it's very early days for [consumer] IM spam," said David Ferris, an analyst with Ferris Research in San Francisco. "It will get much worse.""

AOL blocks instant messaging start-up [Trillian]
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-826625.html "America Online is blocking people using the Trillian interface from linking to its AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) system"

AOL plugs AIM security hole
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-800754.html?legacy=cnet

AOL Spikes Trillian Users
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,84704,00.asp

MSN Messenger Security Hole Found
http://www.instantmessagingplanet.com/news/article/0,,2811_972241,00.html

MSN Messenger Worm Marks Troubling Trend
http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/16355.html

ICQ logs spark corporate nightmare
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-5148422.html

MSN Messenger partial outage: Day 7
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-6473003.html

Viruses wiggle into IM chats
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-6873022.html

AIM system crashes again
http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/internet/04/05/aim.problems/

MSN Messenger Outage Leads to .Net Concerns
http://www.computerworld.com/itresources/rcstory/0,4167,KEY11_STO62231,00.html

IM Genie Out of the Bottle
http://www.eweek.com/article/0,3658,s%253D703%2526a%253D19359,00.asp

IM: No longer a haven from spam
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1106-857658.html