10,000 Hotmail Accounts Hacked

From the Windows Live Team blog:

Over the weekend Microsoft learned that several thousand Windows Live Hotmail customers’ credentials were exposed on a third-party site due to a likely phishing scheme.

One site indicated more than 10,000 Hotmail credentials may have been compromised. Translation: User names and passwords were illegally posted online. Most appear to be accounts in Europe and include @hotmail.com, @msn.com and @live.com accounts. If your account was on this list, you will need to fill out the form linked in the Windows Live Team post to regain access to it, as they are blocking the known compromised accounts for obvious security reasons.

If you haven’t yet read How To Avoid Phishing Worms on WLM please take time to do so. While the illegal list was removed, for a period of time, this information was available to those who may use it for phishing schemes. It is important to know what to watch out for, and how to protect yourself.

Digsby Updates Facebook

Digsby, the multi-network IM and social media tool has been updated with tighter Facebook integration and added support for MySpace IM. This is good, but the really great news is that dotSyntax has also removed the confusion mess of crapware nags from their installer.

The new installer now gives you an option to install the ‘Digsby Toolbar’ and asks if you want to contribute unused CPU cycles to sponsored research. While all of the adware/sponsor programs used in the old Digsby installer were optional, the new installer makes opting out easier and more obvious — a real plus considering that most users don’t really read the fine print during installation.

What’s New?

MySpace users can now use Digsby to connect to their contacts using MySpace IM, without opening a browser. And yes, in spite of the fact that MySpace seems to have fallen off the face of the planet from a press standpoint, there are still 70 million users, making it over 3x bigger than Twitter.

The real meat of the changes are in Digsby’s Facebook integration. Now you can fully interact with your Facebook Newsfeed right from Digsby. You can post your status updates, comment on friend’s activity, “like” status updates and browse photos. And of course, you can use Digsby to connect with your Facebook contacts via Facebook Chat. It’s a great way to stay connected, even when you don’t have Facebook open.

Download Digsby

Make Your Own Google Bot

Chat bots can be fun or useful, but until now, deploying and maintaining a chat bot for Google Talk was difficult. Google has announced a new XMPP API that makes it easier to build your own chat bots with the Google App Engine.

The XMPP support lets you create apps that exchange messages with users on any XMPP system, including of course Google Talk, but any Jabber network. Where it gets really interesting is the built-in XMPP support for the fast-approaching Google Wave, which will be rolling out to a larger beta group at the end of September. This means that you’ll be able to use the XMPP API to build bots that interact with your Waves.

For all the details, read the API release notes.

Preview Yahoo! Messenger 10

Yahoo today announced availability of the Yahoo! Messenger 10 beta. What’s in the new beta? High-quality video calls, a “Y! Updates” view of your contact list that turns Messenger into a Twitter stream, new ways to sort your contacts and support for 16 different languages.

High-Quality Video Calls

They have revamped the one-to-one video calls, building it right into the chat window, improving the video quality and synchronizing the audio with the video. You can swap window positions (between your preview and the person you are viewing), display both windows side-by-side, and put the call on mute or hold.

There are some caveats. The new video call requires both parties to be running Yahoo! Messenger 10, and the changes don’t apply to one-to-many webcam broadcasting.

Y! Updates View

The new Y! Updates view of your contacts is more interesting to me, as it is a unique way of displaying your contacts, sorted in a live stream of updates that will be familiar to Facebook and Twitter users. The most recent updates will appear at the “top” of the contact list. Updates can come from Twitter, Last.fm, Yahoo! Buzz, Flickr, nearly 20 non-Yahoo web sites, and (of course) Y! Messenger status updates.

Why is this interesting? Yahoo is incorporating Twitter and co-opting the real-time update stream in way that other IMs have not quite done. Other IM programs like Digsby and Trillian Astra allow you to see updates from Twitter, but they display them as pop-up alerts, not as a view of your contacts. By turning the contact list model into a real-time stream sorted by the latest updates,  Yahoo has transformed the contact list into something more dynamic and engaging.

The features are interesting, but keep in mind that this is still beta software and there probably are bugs. If that puts you off, stick to version 9.

Resources

• Download Yahoo! Messenger 10 (Windows)
• BigBlueBall Yahoo! Support discussion

Pidgin 2.6.1 Update

Pidgin, the best multi-network instant messenger for Linux just got better. John Bailey provides all the details, which include two notable new features:

• Voice and Video - Thanks to Mike Ruprecht’s Summer of Code project last year, libpurple has been updated to support voice and video. Pidgin 2.6.1 supports this for XMPP currently, but they are working on updates for other protocols.
• Theme Support – Another Summer of Code project, this one from Justin Rodriguez, adds theme support for the buddy list, sounds and status icons.

While these features are great news for Linux users, they have not yet been implemented in the Windows version. There is a long list of updates, fixes and changes. If you’re using Pidgin, it’s worth updating.

Resources

• Pidgin web site

Adium Update Fixes Vulnerability

Adium, my favorite multi-network instant messaging app for the Mac, has released version 1.3.6. The new version includes an updated libpurple to fix a vulnerability with the MSN protocol as well as an updated version of the Facebook chat plugin and numerous bug fixes.

If you use Adium, I highly recommend upgrading.

Meanwhile, work continues on Adium 1.4. If you’d like to help beta test, you can change your preferences to automatically download the latest beta, or visit the Adium beta page.

ICQ 6.5 HTML Injection Bug

The venerable IM is vulnerable. SecuObs.com reports that popular instant messenger ICQ (”I seek you”), version 6.5 is vulnerable to HTML-injection attack.

What does this mean?

The incoming message window in the vulnerable ICQ client works like a mini web browser. An attacker can try to exploit the vulnerability by sending specially crafted message to the remote ICQ client. The malicious message can contain text data which will be interpreted and displayed in the incoming message window as a HTML code. Potentially an arbitrary HTML code could be injected.

There are two risks that have been identified:

1.  Information disclosure

For example, an attacker can inject <IMG> tag that could lead information disclosure (such as remote client’s IP address, browser version, OS version, etc.)

2.  Spoofing

An attacker can spoof ICQ client software’s system messages, interface elements (buttons, links) in the message window, etc. For example, it could be used for forcing of the ICQ users to click on attacker’s malicious link.

The vulnerability exists in the lastest build of ICQ 6.5, and may affect older versions as well.

As of yet, ICQ has not issued an update to fix this vulnerability. To be safe until they do, I suggest using an alternate, compatible IM client  such as Trillian, Adium, Pidgin or Digsby.

Trillian Astra 4.0 Launches

After an extensive public beta, Trillian Astra has officially launched. Trillian Astra is a popular multi-network instant messenger and communication tool that has been around for a long time. This new version brings a much-needed update to that Trillian legacy.

Competition is good for the consumer, and now (at least on Windows) you have two choices: Trillian and Digsby.

Cerulean Studios, the developers behind Trillian Astra, are working on a version for the iPhone and iPod Touch, as well as a cross-platform web client and a dedicated client for OS X. I’ve been testing Trillian Astra for the iPhone, and I like it so far. It leverages push notifications allowing you to stay connected even when it’s not running. If they can improve the time to connect it will be my favorite IM on the iPhone.

Trillian Astra comes in two versions, a free version with basic functionality, and a paid, Pro version that adds additional features. The Pro version sells for $25 (or $10 to upgrade for existing Pro owners). I own a Pro license, and found it was well worth it several years ago. I haven’t yet decided whether I’ll spring for the upgrade, as now I tend to use IM for more basic collaboration, which the free version supports quite nicely.

You can download Trillian Astra for Windows or learn more about it here.

Digsby Adds Real Time Web

dotSyntax released a new version of Digsby, the popular multi-network instant messaging and social networking program. This update provides three new features, and sports a new look for Windows 7.

• Digsby now integrates with MySpaceID, providing real-time notification from your MySpace activity stream, status updates, and photos.
• OneRiot integration provides real-time search, giving users quick access to what’s buzzing in news, videos and blogs.
• And a new Global Status feature lets you update your status across all IM and social network accounts at once, much like Ping.fm or HelloTxt.

“People want instant access to the content their friends are sharing,” said Steve Shapiro, president of dotSyntax, “Our partnerships make Digsby the premier desktop client to discover and participate in social conversations that are taking place right now.”

The new Global Status feature also allows you to share links (via their own URL shortener digs.by) and pictures (via pic.im). I’m not real fond of URL shorteners, especially after this week’s drama surrounding tr.im, but Twitter makes them practically unavoidable. This integration at least makes it easy to shorten URLs when posting updates to Twitter.

It is great to see the competition heating up between Digsby and Trillian Astra. If only Digsby had an iPhone version…

You can download Digsby at www.digsby.com

Digsby Passes 1 Million Users

Today dotSyntax announced that their popular multi-network desktop application Digsby has surpassed a major milestone: 1 million users. The desktop client integrates instant messaging, Facebook, Twitter, text messaging and email into a single desktop client, making it an attractive choice for people connected to multiple networks and social media sites.

Steve Shapiro, president of dotSyntax said, “We built Digsby to simplify people’s lives so they can focus less on signing in and more on staying connected. Our rapid growth shows the utility people find in Digsby and why it’s become the preferred platform for high efficiency digital communication.”

To fuel growth to the next million users, dotSyntax also announced the launch of an affiliate program. The program is designed to encourage people to spread the word about Digsby, and will pay affiliates up to $1.00 for every new Digsby user they sign-up.

Here at BigBlueBall, we helped break the news about Digsby when it first emerged on the scene and I’ve been a big fan. The desktop application is currently only available for Windows. Versions for Mac OS X and Linux have been promised, and you can sign-up here to be notified as soon as they are available.

Download Digsby.

Next Page »