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back to article Users attacked by mysterious AIM buddies

This afternoon, someone was surreptitiously adding unauthorized chat buddies to AOL instant messaging clients running across the Web. Three separate Register employees noticed the offending buddies, which show up under the "AIM Bots" portion of the AOL buddy list, carrying the names "Prof Gilzot," "sharethisdotcom," "Spleak," …

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  1. Martin Porcheron

    I have them

    5 bots appeared on my AIM buddies list today. I'm using Pidgin (http://www.pidgin.im/) So far no messages from them so I'm not really bothered but it is puzzling if AOL deny responsibility.

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  2. Rob

    Your google skills are weak

    http://joelajackson.blogspot.com/

    http://www.profgilzot.com/

    There's information about the other bots there too.

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  3. Ryan

    That is weird...

    Using Trillian 2.0....noticed the AIMbots loading first before any of my contacts today. Didn't give much thought to it... until I read El Reg's article...matching name for name the mysterious bots I now have!

    ...am I being...watched?! O.o

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  4. Olof P

    None for me

    I got rid of the regular bots from my buddy list as soon as they appeared. I'd never use them anyway...

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  5. Lawrence Ficek

    Me too...

    They appeared on my buddy list this morning as well. I am using Miranda IM. I simply assumed they were new bots like the Moviefone bot, so I deleted them.

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  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    On Ichat too

    Yup, noticed them on my ichat, but thought it might be something to do with all the WWDC07 rooms that were about.

    Ian

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  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It's a known problem

    It's an exploit related to the aimfight site. It's a simple matter to look up the buddy lists that your account is on, and a slightly more obscure method to add, remove, or delete from those lists. I've seen it done personally.

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  8. Mojo

    Nothing new

    Talk about old news! This is nothing new, I've been seeing random AOL bots poppoing up for as long as I can remember.

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  9. Sam

    What's worse - some of the bots still need work

    [11:03:32 PM] Prof Gilzot: A rectangle has an area of 26 square inches. What is one possible value for its perimeter?

    (A) 6.5

    (B) 13

    (C) 26

    (D) 28

    (E) 54

    *Sam does some math*

    High-School algebra tells us that C, D, or E are all valid answers.

    I don't know where these test-prep questions came from, but D was wrong, that answer was E.

    I say that a width and length of (7 - (23)^(-1)) and ( 26 / (7 - (23)^(-1)) ) seem to work just fine for a perimeter of 28 and an area of 26.

    I decided I would share that with the creators or the tutors, and Googling prof gilzot yielded a stunningly small ONE Google "o" of results, half of which were foreign.

    On http://www.profgilzot.com/ there was no 'contact us', nor any email addresses at all for that matter.

    Silly silly people.

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  10. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    Half our buddies are bots then ?

    Looks like our lizard overlords are already teaching us to interact with their underlings. Makes for better population control, I think.

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  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Yep... Trillian got them too...

    I just deleted them and the AIM Bot group. I don't need nannying, thank you very much.

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  12. simon c. russell

    I got em too

    initially thought I'd been hacked -

    then did a quick google for AIM bots

    tried to chat to them

    they proved moronic

    deleted entire bot group

    tbh get more fun from my hotpoint

    xxx

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