How Dumb Are We, Anyway? Pretty Dumb
HotHardware takes its responsibility as a member of the internet tech community seriously. And when we hear of "highly critical" flaws in widely used software or hardware, we like to tell our readers about it. But there comes a time when you read about how spammers and spoofers and phishers and hackers are taking advantage of people, and you think to yourself: "How dumb do you have to be to fall for this?" The answer must be that we're all pretty dumb, in the aggregate, or nobody would even try these exploits. Who exactly needs to be warned not to accept strange Yahoo and MSN Messenger webcam invites?
Exploit code for a “highly critical” vulnerability in MSN Messenger
has been posted to a Chinese-language forum, prompting Microsoft to
urge all users to immediately migrate to Windows Live Messenger 8.1.
The exploit, available here, is caused by an error in the handling of video conversations and can be exploited to cause a heap-based buffer overflow via specially crafted data sent to a user.
Secunia warns that successful exploitation may allow execution of arbitrary code, but requires that the victim accepts the incoming Webcam invitation.
“This is under investigation,” a Microsoft spokesman said.
We need to stop investigating the software, and start investigating the users. Users really need to look at themselves, stop blaming software manufacturers for their woes for not protecting them from their own poor judgement, and remember that constantly impulsively indulging their primitive urge to see somebody naked is going to make them unfit for anything but being a Senator from Idaho. Just say no, people!
