Zdnet have an interesting article about the use of phishing techniques being used on Yahoo!'s Instant Messaging service, Yahoo! Messenger. Yahoo! reported that it was being targeted by scammers last Thursday. It would seem that users are being sent messages asking them to click on a link to a site that resembles the Yahoo! one, once there they are asked to sign in using their username and password.
The worrying part of all this is that the requests look like they come from someone on the Yahoo! friends' list.
How do they get the friend's email? Well. once you've got into one yahoo! account you can tap into the email addresses that are held in the account.
A Yahoo! spokesman had this to say:
"Hackers have become very devious in their methods to obtain personal information. In this case, the hacker was able to trick the user into providing personal information by disguising their identity to make it appear that the message was coming from a trusted source."
In the past couple of months Microsoft's MSN Messenger service has been hit by various malware, including a Trojan horse and a virus. as recently as February MSN Messenger users were forced to update their client software to prevent one of the worms spreading around its network.