Following on from our security alert this week MSN have not only delayed the release of an external beta but they"re planning to remove crucial new features temporarily. According to sources close to MSN, MSN Messenger 7 beta will ship without "winks" and deluxe display pictures. Currently it"s easy for hackers to exploit the code of winks to display any flash movies on a users computer for any amount of time.
MSN took the decision following the public announcements of the exploits. We"re unsure whether "winks" are going to be axed from MSN Messenger 7 or whether MSN are merely revamping them to be included in later betas.
In other news, The Messenger team will be implementing a CVR update that will force all existing MSN Messenger V7.0 users to downgrade to V6.2. This CVR is scheduled to start on 6 Oct 2004. Anyone running MSN Messenger V7.0 build 0205 will need to downgrade. If you do not downgrade, you will be unable to sign into the Messenger service. We"re unsure whether this will effect other builds.