AIM Users Beware

Hello everyone. I am here to alert you on a growing problem that many people have emailed me telling me about.

A wide range of AIM users, mainly with the connection speed of 56K, have been saying they have been kicked offline by other members, and not by AOL. I was skepticle of this at first, I thought they had been notified and were too stupid to realize it. But I was wrong.

A growing number of AIM Progs have been giving things like Color Bombs, IP Bombers, E-Mail Bombers, and more. Its not so much what they do, its that they do too much of it, and they flood your connection with a huge amount of data, and the result: being kicked offline. There are many programs available in underground sites, just to let everyone know.

I would like to take a moment to blame it all on AOL and crappy engineering. Thank you.

Well, who's to blame for not installing a firewall on your system? They are free! Geezzzzzzzzz people, start installing firewalls.

Ain't nothing like a script kiddie with AIM and too much time on their hands......

When you get flooded, dose it just lose connection and say " connection lost" or is it more likely to give an error message refering to the exe? My AIM has been crashing alot recently, and yes I do have a firewall.

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Anyway LoL ip bombing someone to lose their connection is easier than flooding and takes lest time anyway, flooding sucks. Yes this was offensive to script kiddies. No, I don't give a damn.

A firewall won't protect the flood of data such as it is described, it seems, becaue AOL will kick you off from a flood like that, and all AIM data comes through the AOL server. . .I could be wrong, but i don't think that a firewall will protect this certain problem. but I would still get one and use it

No a firewall won't stop it. I remember back when AOL was still in version 3.0 we had the same problem. What happens is people have scripts that will Instant Message you like 30 or 40 or even 100 times right after another. This will obviously flood your connection and boot you offline. I've seen the same achieved with chat invitations also. Your firewall won't protect you because you allowed the aol software to connect thru it. This has also taken place in the yahoo chat rooms as well. This is nothing new. I think most of these programs like AOL and Yahoo base their chat windows on HTML. So it would be very easy to create a malicious HTML script and paste it into a chat window and send it to someone else. I remember back in like '93 or '94 it was really bad on AOL. I don't use either anymore so I don't know if it is still around.

My friend xmaddness.. ahh.. it is still very easy to send an HTML script with a hundred different color RGB values in it... its called a color bomb, and it works quite well. :p

LOL@silentstalker... That has to suck... I have AIM (an0rex1cscrty) and if someone messes around with me I
a) Get their IP and contact their ISP or if the **** gets too deep,
b) take matters into my own hands, block them :)

Aim and script kiddies goo together :-\

all i can say is that its people like us (anti-hackers) who must provide a solution so that AOL can steal it. this arising problem needs a solution, and it needs one fast.

Firewall won't stop the flood like many of you had said. But what it should do is give you there IP. Am I right or am I wrong? I might be wrong though because like someone said, your firewall allowed you to access AOL and then the instant message wont show up on your firewall.

This maybe a newbie question but. Why wouldnt I be able to trace an IP on a regular IM. Why do I have to be "directly connected" in order for the IP to show up in netstat. When I recieve an IM isnt that a connection...

If you get an IM in aol it should go thru AOL's proxy, and shouldn't connect directly to your computer. At least i know thats how it works with Yahoo.

Actually, I think AOL might make a direct connection. It's cheaper so it's quite likely they've gone for it.

Actually, if they were to knock down that little bar that shows how often you can send a message over AIM, it could slow down how many messages the user can send, and thus tiding the flow of boots. And it wouldnt interupt normal chatting unless you like to spam your friends with parts of sentences.