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Representatives of two security firms claim that flaws in Lotus Notes allow a skilled intruder to open the e-mail boxes or databases of virtually any Lotus Notes user, send e-mail under that user's name, and authorize others to access those mailboxes or databases.

The security consultants also contend that another flaw, tied to the Domino server, allows outside users to circumvent protections against viruses and other malicious code.

Lotus says that such attacks require very specific conditions and that remedies are already available to Notes administrators using newer versions of Domino server. Notes runs on the Domino server.

Some 60 million end-users, primarily corporate customers, run Notes, according to Lotus.

The alleged flaws were made public over the weekend in a presentation at the DefCon hacker's conference in Las Vegas. The consultants say they had withheld crucial details that could permit others to easily duplicate their process. The security consultants described their research to Lotus before their DefCon presentation, say both parties.

Chris Goggans, a hacker who previously called himself Erik Bloodaxe, described the methods he and associates used to sneak into other users' Lotus Notes accounts. Goggans, now the director of operations for Security Design International, worked with Kevin McPeake and others at Trust Factory, a Dutch security consulting firm, to identify the alleged security holes.

Lotus Rebuts Charges

The security product management team for Domino, however, says system administrators can thwart such attacks with tools offered in recent versions of the product.

"We have tools available today in the current version of the product that allow you to protect against all of these vulnerabilities," says Katherine Spanbauer, a member of the Lotus security team. Lotus recommends customers use Domino version 5.02, the newest release, for the greatest protection--but Version 4.6 also contains safeguards.

Lotus is preparing a detailed response to the claims made by the security consultants. The information should be posted on the Lotus Security Zone portion of the company's Web site by Tuesday, Spanbauer says.

"They explained their attacks to us, so we are comfortable that we could offer our customers solutions to the problems," says Kevin Lynch, also a member of the Lotus security team. He says Lotus has not heard of any such attacks actually occurring, and has not received customer complaints.