Yahoo Protocol Tutorial (YMSG 12)

This may be the most useful information on this site. Started as a security class paper, the Yahoo! Tutorial has grown into a primer for the Yahoo! Messenger protocol. This paper started the basis of the Yahoo! Coder's Cookbook and should be the first thing you read if you are interested in the underlying Yahoo! Messenger Protocol.

1. Introduction - The reason why I have wasted so much of my life on Yahoo! Messenger
2. History - The history leading up to the chat revolution
3. Enter Yahoo! - Yahoo! small part of history and the Internet
4. Yahoo! Messenger Overview - Many of the features found in Yahoo! Messenger
5. Disclaimer and Legal - What you need, or wish you didn't need, to know about the legal ramifications of working with the Yahoo! Protocol
6. Money and Closed Protocols - Why Yahoo! doesn't openly publish its protocol
7. Yahoo Packet Structure - Yahoo! Messenger packet overview
8. Sign-in - The procedure for signing into the Yahoo! network
9. Instant Messages - How IMs are sent and received
10. Peer to Peer Transfers - Not all traffic is diverted through the Yahoo! servers
11. Booters Introduction - The study of booters is the reason for all of this research
12. Shared Files Boot - This is the most common boot type
13. Disconnect and Proto D/C Boots - Another common type of boot
14. Remote Code Execution? - Introduction to the second half of the tutorial
15. Yahoo! Trainer - This is the muscle behind my research. The Yahoo! Trainer is a program that I created to demonstrate how some of the booters work
16. Assembly Analysis - An introduction to analyzing Yahoo! Messenger on the assembly level
17. Crash - The EIP went where
18. Arbitrary Code Execution - This shows the address that the stack tried to redirect to but failed
19. Conclusion - I think the name says it all
20. Yahoo! Trainer Source Code - Not much information here except many pages of source code for the Trainer

Some may have a need to setup a webcam mirror while in a chat room. This allows the bypass of the usual 30 viewer limit. What you do with the mirror is your own business.

Ever needed into a Windows box and didn't have the password? Here is the solution.

The symptom, description, and possible solutions to the Sorry, Unable to process request at this time -- error 999 service message.

Fine out if you are vulnerable to the latest Yahoo! Messenger exploit.