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From Instant Messaging Planet:

A new "multiple language" smart worm is spreading through Instant Messaging, checking system settings of IM clients and then sending messages in the appropriate language. The virus appears to be a new variant of the Kelvir instant messaging (IM) worm dubbed Kelvir.HI, propagating over a leading public IM network, said security firm Akonix.

Akonix says it is the first worm ever identified that intelligently checks system settings and delivers the worm in the proper language. "The rise of IM threats is mostly 2005 phenomena," Francis Costello, CTO at Akonix, said. "For the most part these social engineering attacks are pretty basics. Except this one."

Costello also said this form of advanced social engineering, where a virus discovers which language a user is working in, and then propagates itself in the same language, is a trend likely to continue. So far the worm has only been spotted on the MSN IM client.

"It figures if you're speaking French, your buddy is also speaking French," he said.

Earlier this month, the Akonix Security Center reported a total 42 new threats aimed at corporate IM systems in July, which is a 24 percent increase over the previous month.

The Akonix Security Center has classified the most recent worm as low risk and immediately used the industry's only real-time IM malware, SPIM and protocol update system to automatically push updates to customers for protection against this threat.

So far the smart worm has been spotted in 10 languages, delivering the same line: "haha i found your picture!" The languages are: English, Spanish, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Swedish, Italian, Portuguese and Turkish. The virus moves once users click on the link in the message, a copy of the Spybot worm is automatically downloaded to their computer. Spybot is a backdoor program that, among other malicious activity, can end security applications, log keystrokes and receive remote commands, according to Akonix.

There are links from InfoTech's site that pretty much lead to the truth. In a nutshell, Microsoft last week bought purchased media-streams.com, and "In August, Microsoft bought Teleo, a developer of VoIP, PSTN termination and click-to-call technology, which can be used to bring VoIP to the IM space." TFA is simply a typical FUD campaign from MS and its partners. Microsoft's implementation of VOIP with thier revamped IM in Office will, of course be safe and secure, and this is another reason why it is so important to continue in the forced upgrade cycle of proprietary software. Looks like microsoft is taking on 'eBay' as well as 'Google', not to mention the whole FOSS community.

Instant Messaging is turning out to be a vital business tool. Take a look at The Financial Instant Messaging Association, (aka FIMA) http://www.financialim.org/membership_financial.ht m

Financial Services run on messaging. In the past it was all very proprietary home grown solutions. A number of firms have seen the potential for Jabber/XMPP and deployed Enterprise Instant Messaging solutions with external connectivity to clients and counter parties.

Reuters is getting very serious about IM. However they've been a Microsoft shop for a long time and hired away the LCS team from Microsoft. They are still trying to own the whole network and keep things under their control.

Another company offering XMPP based solutions for Financial Services is Communicator, Inc. http://www.communicator.com/HubConnex_Features.htm l

EBS is building a Foreign Exchange trading platform with Jabber/XMPP. http://www.instantmessagingplanet.com/enterprise/a rticle.php/3345961

IBM has SIP/SIMPLE based products, but when IBM Global Services needed to build a solution for 911 Emergency Services, they built a system on top of Jabber.

Remember this all started with Jabber the open source product. It's available for you to use freely for IM, or better yet for application messaging. Slashdot users can make a serious difference. Get the companies you work for to try Jabber. Try to avoid Micro$oft's LCS

Cheers to Mandrake for including Jabber RPMs in it's linux distro. (I'm not saying other distro's don't include it as well, but it's the one I use).

Yes, they were, until last August. They key here is that AOL couldn't offer this kind of stuff until "it could prove that it was no longer the dominant player in free, public IM, or unless it opened its systems to interoperate with competitors." That 'or' gets them the leeway they need, along with the newer, more business-friendly (read: Republican) FCC board. They can probably show that they're no longer the dominant player by quoting Microsoft's own Messenger numbers back at them, which probably includes every XP installation out there as a user.

Low cost it probably is not. And the client software sucks, be nice if they had at least 1/2 the functionality of Gaim.

The Deviant Tech., products looks interesting and is probably cheaper than Sametime. There is an interesting article here

If you already have existing contacts w/ IBM U might be able to leverage them to get a deal on Sametime, especially if you have Deviant Catalog sitting on your desk. ;) Deviant looks almost like an applicance type of idea and looks worth investigating.

For those who don't know, companies in the Financial Sector are now being required to same all e-mail, and IM communications for employees responsible for Financial decisions. In other words the Mutual Fund manager has all her communications recorded, but the lad cleaning the bog (loo/toilet/john ...) does not.

I believe that this data has to be saved for seven years (or five or something). From what I've heard it's a tremendous amount of data. Where I work there are thousands of employees whose e-mail & IM have to be saved. We talking many terabytes of data here and it's a real nightmare. Thankfully I'm not involved in that!

It will interesting to hear which solution you use, how easy it is to set up and run, and how the users like.

Afraid I have to post Anon, part of working for big Fin companies is not talking about what their infrastructure, or at least not telling which company's infrastructure one's referring to! Luck!

To be honest, I have no idea how the RIAA will react to this. I wonder if this will be their IBM-SCO-like 800lb gorilla. I wonder what MS will eventually charge for membership on the service eventually and how much of it the RIAA may get.

I bet you're right about it being filled with DRM. It also wouldn't suprise me if they are using some of the DRM they have created for Media Player. I wonder if that's of any anti-trust interest.

Remember when AOL and Time Warner merged in 2000 and the FCC stated that AOL must work towards making its AIM network interoperable with other competing services and that if AOL wanted to enable "video conferencing and other advanced features via Time Warner's broadband cable lines" that they would need to open its IM network to competition?

And Microsoft was complaining that AOL should open their AIM network to other IM clients? A Microsoft spokesperson said, "As we've said all along, we believe that the ultimate benefit for consumers is a standard for instant messaging/interoperability among all IM products. MSN continues to work with the IETF and the rest of the industry to make that happen so that consumers can communicate openly and freely with friends and family no matter what instant messaging service they use."

Have they forgotten?

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