A Canadian computer security company has dropped allegations of a vulnerability in Microsoft's Hotmail Web-based email service, saying the problem they announced in a press release had been fixed weeks before.
Neurocom issued a warning over a security hole involving a malicious program known as a Trojan horse, which passes itself off as another application.
In this case, it said potential hackers could use the Trojan horse, written in HTML, to create a "perfect replica" of Hotmail's re-login page.
The exploit was described on the Bugtraq security mailing list and was repaired within days, according to Microsoft's security response team.
Microsoft said that the security firm had violated standard bug-reporting protocols by going public with the alleged vulnerability before contacting the company's security team.
"Our purpose was not to punish Microsoft at all," said Cyril Simonnet, an executive at Neurocom's Canada division. "Our purpose is just to find security breaches."
