COMMAND

    Yahoo! Instant Messenger

SYSTEMS AFFECTED

    Yahoo! Instant Messenger

PROBLEM

    Shaun  O'Callaghan  found  following.   When  being  warned his my
    firewall  that  some  packet  contents  may contain sensitive data
    when  connecting  to  Yahoo!  servers  with  the  popular,  Yahoo!
    Instant  Messenger,  he  found  to  his amazement his username and
    password combination where being sent to the server in plain text.

    This  is  performed  to  the  many  Yahoo!  servers by a plain get
    request on the  standard ports than  YIM uses.   This is affecting
    all clients on all operating systems.

    The following  link explains  that your  Yahoo password  must be a
    different password then your Yahoo Security Key.  It also explains
    that the security  key MUST be  used to access  billpay, auctions,
    etc:

        http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/skey/skey-12.html

SOLUTION

    Yahoo is working on this.