Compromised security of IMs?

Hi Folks,
A friend told me today that someone had said they could read her IMs (between her & other people).
I said I thought that was, if not absolutely impossible, very very difficult.
I imagine that each IM conversation has an ID that is as impossible to guess as your Avatar ID. She thought that if he was the owner of a Sim that he might have extra privileges and therefore might be able to somehow find a list of all the IM conversations involving people in his Sim.
I'm sure LL can access our IMs if they need to but other than that (& ignoring the possibility that her PC had been hacked into and he could read her IM logs) it's pretty secure.

What do you think?

Even worse than that, one time someone was able to listen in on my private voice call.

I think this is exactly as likely as anything else posted on an internet forum because an anonymous friend said that some other random person made some arbitrary claim that something was possible, it having not actually happened to any of the concerned parties.

Was she using a third-party viewer ?

No - just the standard SL viewer.

Anti - she is quite worried about it. Convinced that it might be happening. I am just looking for info on how hard it would be.

Could always ask them to paste a sample to back up their claim =)

Cosmo,

with all due respect, when "a friend told me [...] that someone had said" I'd rather take that with more than just a grain of salt. I believe it when there is direct, reproducible evidence, as there is no obvious way how this may happen (outside of the Linden server room, that is).

IM conversations don't go through sims, so being a sim owner won't have any effects. (Chat is another story, although you need to set up a 'listener bug' for this, which is illegal according to TOS)

There are only a few possibilities to 'capture' somebody elses IM conversations, although all of them are highly unlikely, and require a lot of skill. And all are highly illegal (as in law illegal, not TOS illegal)

'Man in the middle' attack.
It's possible to basically put a machine between your communication with LL. All packages sent from SL are first sent to this computer, then sent to your client (and vice versa). A lot of the communications between SL servers and the client are (still) not encrypted, so if you're able to place this machine, it's possible to capture IM conversations. But being able to place this computer in between, usually requires a lot of work and technical knowhow. And usually requires you to first 'connect' your client to another grid, or install specific software on it, which doesn't come from LL. (Custom clients etc.)
All 'known' homegrown clients are basically open source, and there is no chance that they contain this kind of logic.
Also SL has tightened up a lot of the security on their connection protocols in the last client updates, making this kind of attack more and more unlikely.

'Spyware attack':
With a piece of spyware on the clients computer, it's possible to capture anything happening on this computer. The same rules as for the 'man in the middle' attack apply though. It mostly requires you to have first installed some kind of custom software on your system.

I have to agree with what the other people in this thread say. Take any of these kind of comments with a grain (bag) of salt.

In theory it should also be possible to directly hack the SL servers, although i'm sure they must be pretty tight as the communication protocols etc are open. I've not looked at it, but if I wanted to hack somebodies IM conversations this would be my first route of approach.

Installing routing hardware in datacentres is expensive and is hit and miss and very much too prohibitively expensive outside the world of corporate espionage (where it is more common than many realise).

The second most likely approach would be to try and get the target to install some kind of key logging or network port sniffing software - but this would likely arrouse suspision in delivery. There are two ways to deliver the payload that would be worth investigating, it might be easier to datamine their IP address and try to directly hack them, but most modern routers make this a very daunting task indeed. The alternative would be to install some kind of script/media or web link in the sim and try to deliver the payload via web content - although this scatter gun approach is less likely to suceed because of anti-virus' and general user caution toward such things.

In short, no, it's not likely somebody is listening to your IM's. Although being I.T. anything is possible.

There was a SL server issue for over a year that occasionally broadcast private IM to others nearby, seemingly in their own IM windows. JIRA is here: http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-1043

According to the JIRA, this was fixed in a server update in August. But it's not impossible that it has occurred again. It wouldn't be the first re-introduction of a defect in the server code.

Used to be a tool call God-ear and it would allow you the abilty to hear everything and that was including im, but as the post above me stated that was patched and this tool no longer works (when I joined in march of 07 this item still worked to a point and I got a ruded awakening when I was spyed on).

I've heard this claimed at least three times. Each time, I've challenged the person to monitor my IMs and send me a log to prove it. I've even offered a cash prize.

No takers. No winners.

Ricky - absolutely. However, I know her well and she believes this guy. I don't believe it is really possible without a huge amount of effort & knowledge.

Thanks for everyone's replies. I think I can set her mind at rest.