Yahoo to fix password exposure problem in Zimbra

Yahoo to fix password exposure problem in Zimbra

New security features planned for Zimbra will resolve an issue responsible for passwords being transmitted as clear when accessing Yahoo Mail, a Yahoo spokeswoman said on Tuesday.

"Plain text authentication is an industry-wide challenge that major e-mail clients and providers face when providing the right balance of backward compatibility and security," a Yahoo spokeswoman said in an e-mail statement.

"Zimbra has plans as part of the next beta release to implement additional new security features to provide more secure authentication options. This approach will be in place in the next few weeks well before we launch the service out of beta," the statement said.

A Canadian programmer discovered the problem during a Yahoo University Hack Day at Waterloo University last week.