Hotmail, Yahoo Users at Risk of PC Takeover:
"A potentially serious security flaw found in Web-based e-mail services offered by Microsoft and Yahoo could put millions of PCs at risk of takeover, an Internet security research firm warned Tuesday.…"

The vulnerability only affects Hotmail and Yahoo running on Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) browser.

"When the victim attempts to read this email, the code executes and may result in severe consequences," the company said. Successful exploit could lead to theft of a user's login and password, disclosure of the content of any e-mail in the mailbox and disclosure of all contacts within the address book.

Additionally, GreyMagic said the attacker could manipulate the system to automatically send e-mails from the mailbox and to exploit vulnerabilities in IE to access the user's file system and eventually take over his or her machine.

The company said Microsoft reacted to its warning with a fix for the flaw. However, GreyMagic said all attempts to contact Yahoo's security department failed, meaning that Yahoo's users are still vulnerable. Efforts by internetnews.com to contact Yahoo at press time were unsuccessful.

…the vulnerability makes use of an IE technology called HTML+TIME (based on SMIL), which is meant to add timing and media synchronization support to HTML pages.

One of the features of HTML+TIME is the ability to manipulate any attribute on an element via special control elements.…

http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/print.php/3329821