Users of the popular Trillian instant messaging client need to update their software following the discovery of a serious security bug. The multi-protocol chat application from Cerulean Studios is subject to a heap overflow vulnerability because of programming errors involving the word-wrapping of UTF-8 text.
As a result, hackers might be able to crash versions of the application, thereby loading exploit code onto vulnerable systems. Viewing a malicious message containing a specially malformed UTF-8 string would be enough to trigger the attack. "The MSN protocol is a known attack vector for this vulnerability. However, exploitation could potentially occur using any supported protocol," an advisory by iDefense warns.