According to a German researcher, a XSS bug in the latest (5.5.0.113) Skype version for Windows could allow attackers to inject malicious code into users' phone sessions and in the end even hijack their computers.


The vulnerability is due to a lack of input validation and output sanitization of the profile entries for home, office and mobile number, says the researcher, but Skype has denied that the vulnerability exists.

But, according to The Register, the researcher insists on the veracity of his findings: "First of all, they use HTML to embed all entries in Skype user's profile. The 'parser' is not validating the input, so I was able to inject HTML code (any HTML tags are possible)."

He says that the attack is executed once a user checks out a profile with the malicious code embedded in the profile entries in question. The injected code can be a malicious JavaScript command or a even a hyperlink to a website where the user is taken to get infected.