Wondering - is aMSN as vulnerable as MSN?

[Giles]

I have heard many times that MSN has a huge number of vulnerabilities, and is one of the most common ways for a virus to get onto a windows box. I was simply wondering whether aMSN (or any other such clones) is as bad, or is it more secure? I doubt it could be less secure, if the stories are true, but I'm not sure whether it's the MSN protocol that has the problems, in which case any vulnerabilities would apply to every piece of software using that protocol.
(Can we leave aside the obvious answer - aMSN is more secure cos you're running it on Linux - and just assume that I'm using the windows version of aMSN on the same computer as MSN, for comparison)

Thanks for any info you can give
Toodle-oo
Giles

[darklordsatan]

Well, this is one of my usual shots in the dark.
Im not aware of msn vulnerabilities you're talking (i.e Ive heard something but dont really know what they're all about), but my bet is that they have to do with activex controls and shared libs, for example.
Amsn is made in Tcl/Tk, so its just offers a free implementation of msn protocol, the rest (the app itself) is totally different. And I dont think the vulnerabilities we're talking about here are due to a protocol.
But again, this is IMHO.

[Giles]

Thaks for the ideas - I think I'm probably safe if I keep telling people to switch if they're worried about security. After all, it gets them off microsoft code

If anyone does have concrete knowledge that'd confirm darkilordsatan's ideas, I'd be grateful to hear, but if not I'm quite happy to go with his theory.

Thanks again
Toodle-oo
Giles

[d0p]

there's several proof of concept exploits for msn messenger and read about some for hotmail, msn passport and msn unsurprisingly.

[Muser]

Oh my gosh! A product made by Microsoft having vulnerabilities! Surely you jest.