Hacked Computer

[fandango]

Being a complete technophobe watching Neil doing his thing was a real eye opener!!

He removed so much junk from my pc freeing up space and removing harmful threats etc.. I can"t thank him enough, a true gent willing to help out as a pure favour considering we have never met or chatted before a really nice gesture.. I owe him a few beers if we ever meet at a APAT event..

www.notfrustratedanymore.com.  

[stone]

Sorry to reach this thread a little late, but I too had a hacking attack on 23rd Dec and I am almost out of the woods now.

Reason for posting is that I wanted to confirm that hacking problems arn"t just confined to the Windows world, I"m a Mac user and had my FB, hotmail, gmail and stars account done over. I had a tug of war with the hacking program / users which got particularly interesting after I changed all my verification details from another computer and they still got in.

Stars were very good, they were the ones who advised me of the hack. Even after the hacker had confirmed that everything was ok, they suspended the account and only after a thorough grilling over the phone as to my poker habits did they reinstate me.

[AMRN]

....and only after a thorough grilling over the phone as to my poker habits did they reinstate me.

Bet that was an interesting conversation.... "I play poker, I lose. I reload. I play poker, I lose. I reload...."  

[lukybugur]

Reason for posting is that I wanted to confirm that hacking problems aren"t just confined to the Windows world, I"m a Mac user and had my FB, hotmail, gmail and stars account done over.

I think many are getting a bit paranoid about their own setups here ...

Facebook is hacked REGULARLY and it remains one of the biggest targets for hackers. Some of you may remember reading news articles that personal pics of Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook CEO) appeared in plain view due to a coding error within the Facebook structure just a couple of months back.

Despite your best practices regarding your passwords, if there are security "holes" on Facebook servers, getting passwords is the easy bit. In the recent past the CIA, Google, Facebook and Microsoft have all been subject to a number of attacks that have made the news so I wouldn"t get too hung up on your own PC problems. If Blue Chips companies with their $Billions / year IT infrastructures can get breached, imagine how easy it is for the same person / team of hackers to infiltrate your itty bitty PC and how much less profitable it is for them to target YOU alone.

[poker_jason]

Good passwords should be 8 characters long and contain uPPeR and LoWer case characters, at least one number and one symbol. Using a % * or ^ adds that little bit more to a password and should stop folk ever being able to "guess" it.

I"m not an IT expert, but I read somewhere recently that most of us have been taught to choose passwords that are easy for a program to break but difficult for a human to remember, whereas we should be choosing ones that are easy to remember and difficult for a program to break. A program doesn"t care whether the digits are letters, numbers or symbols - they are all just another possible digit to be tried and an 8-digit password of any type an be cracked in a short time, whereas a 30-digit one would take squillions of years longer (or something like that). The article suggested that running a few easy-to-remember words together was way more effective, ie SOLENTPOKERCLUB is far superior to BCPC**00. I"ll leave to the experts to confirm or not.

In keeping with this thread, if anyone needs a mobile nail technician, etc.............

This was in the recent copy of the BCS Mag ITNow - read the same article. Of course the key is your e-mail account as you often have any account reset sent there......along with all your emails that tells poeple where you shop, gamble, etc....

Also I"m a consultant Business Analyst / Project Manager

[technolog]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16426824

A computer worm has stolen 45,000 login credentials from Facebook, security experts have warned.

The data is believed to have been taken largely from Facebook accounts in the UK and France, according to security firm Seculert.

The culprit is a well-known piece of malware - dubbed Ramnit - which has been around since April 2010 and has previously stolen banking details.

Facebook told the BBC that it was looking into the issue.

The latest iteration of the worm was discovered in the labs of security firm Seculert.

"We suspect that the attackers behind Ramnit are using the stolen credentials to login to victims" Facebook accounts and to transmit malicious links to their friends, thereby magnifying the malware"s spread even further," said the researchers on the firm"s blog.

"In addition, cybercriminals are taking advantage of the fact that users tend to use the same password in various web-based services to gain remote access to corporate networks," it added.
"Viral power"

Social networks offer rich pickings for hackers because of the huge amount of personal data that is stored on them. Increasingly malware is being updated for the social networking age.

"It appears that sophisticated hackers are now experimenting with replacing the old-school email worms with more up-to-date social network worms. As demonstrated by the 45,000 compromised Facebook subscribers, the viral power of social networks can be manipulated to cause considerable damage to individuals and institutions when it is in the wrong hands," said Seculert.

According to Seculert, 800,000 machines were infected with Ramnit from September to the end of December 2011.

Microsoft"s Malware Protection Center (MMPC) described Ramnit as "a multi-component malware family which infects Windows executable as well as HTML files... stealing sensitive information such as stored FTP credentials and browser cookies".

In July 2011 a Symantec report estimated that Ramnit worm variants accounted for 17.3% of all new malicious software infections.

For Facebook users concerned that they have been affected by the worm, the advice is to run anti-virus software.

"It won"t necessarily be obvious that you have been attacked. The worm is stealing passwords so it is not going to announce itself," said Graham Cluley, senior security consultant at Sophos.

[Claw75]

slightly concerned that both times I"ve tried to log onto my online banking since this happened I"ve had to enter my password and security code several times (correctly) before they were recognised and accepted.  Should I be worried?  If I ever log on to online banking from a new computer I get texted a code to use and so far I haven"t had anything to alert me that anyone has tried accessing it and there hasn"t been any unusual activity......

[Foggy]

I would air your concerns to the bank immediately, also give them the information of your hacking problem!

I contacted the bank after my original hacking and cancelled my bank card, they have subsequently issued a new one.

Following the paypal transaction with Carl, the twats tried to transfer £250 into paypal, the bank stopped this immediately.

Apart from my loss at Pokerstars, I think that my security is better then ever, but I will be a lot more vigilant into doing anything online in the future.

[Jon MW]

One of my hotmail accounts got compromised, but it doesn"t look like it was the same sort of thing as the others.

This just looks like a brute force hack then they sent out dodgy spam to everyone in my address book, changed the details and running scans but it"s the account I use for general use so there"s not much on it regarding anything that needs to be kept secure.

[Pitchie]

One of my hotmail accounts got compromised, but it doesn"t look like it was the same sort of thing as the others.

This just looks like a brute force hack then they sent out dodgy spam to everyone in my address book, changed the details and running scans but it"s the account I use for general use so there"s not much on it regarding anything that needs to be kept secure.

I rarely use my hotmail account and noticed a while back (after an email from a friend) that it had been compromised. Even over this period of time they"d only sent spam. Nothing malicious so to speak.

[Des]

One of my hotmail accounts got compromised, but it doesn"t look like it was the same sort of thing as the others.

This just looks like a brute force hack then they sent out dodgy spam to everyone in my address book, changed the details and running scans but it"s the account I use for general use so there"s not much on it regarding anything that needs to be kept secure.

I received an email from you last night advising me how to get better orgasms.  Frankly, I was disappointed it was a hack.  I thought I was finally going to learn the secret of the hat.

[Delboy]

One of my hotmail accounts got compromised, but it doesn"t look like it was the same sort of thing as the others.

This just looks like a brute force hack then they sent out dodgy spam to everyone in my address book, changed the details and running scans but it"s the account I use for general use so there"s not much on it regarding anything that needs to be kept secure.

I received an email from you last night advising me how to get better orgasms.  Frankly, I was disappointed it was a hack.  I thought I was finally going to learn the secret of the hat.

Brilliant, just brilliant  

[MintTrav]

I received an email from you last night advising me how to get better orgasms.

Please forward.

[cashman]

I received an email from you last night advising me how to get better orgasms.

Please forward.

[Des]

I received an email from you last night advising me how to get better orgasms.

Please forward.

I"ve tried, the secret"s just too goldarn"d BIG to leave my inbox...