Security Analyses for Enterprise Instant Messaging (EIM) Systems

Abstract

Consumer instant messaging (CIM) services (aka public IM) such as AOL Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, and MSN Messenger have achieved critical mass appeal and usage as a convenient and informal method of communication supporting realtime messaging and presence awareness.^1,2 Unfortunately, these services are highly vulnerable from a security standpoint. Some of these security problems include threats from viruses and worms, Trojan horses, identity theft, impersonation, eavesdropping, data loss, and denial-of-service attacks.