Hacker

[Steve B.]

I'm pretty sure I have a pretty skilled hacker in at least my Yahoo and G-mail accounts. Any suggestions?

 

[bbaquiran]

Check your PC for keyloggers or other trojans.

 

[Ludeykrus]

What makes you think this?

 

[Tokyo Slim]

Looks like its time for a Mac!

 

[GQgeek]

Originally Posted by Tokyo Slim

Looks like its time for a Mac!

Delusions of grandeur. Steve, i doubt a skilled hacker would waste his time with your gmail account. Much bigger fish and all that. If you're not just imagining things, my money is on a script-****** at most, but in reality, it's likely your wife wondering what else you're in to after seeing the squirting thread.

 

[AstroWolf]

stop stealing gov secrets.

 

[Steve B.]

It involves a woman and a jilted lover (not me). I'm know he has broken into her account and I'm pretty sure he's broken into mine...

I'm just wondering if my IT brethren have any clues other than the obvious of changing the password.

 

[bbaquiran]

the plot thickens!

 

[haganah]

Inform Yahoo and Gmail

 

[GQgeek]

does he have physical access to your computer? Or do you have a really easy password that's easy to guess? i haven't heard of anyone hacking hotmail or gmail. A Key logger/trojan is really the most likely scenario here.

 

[GQgeek]

And why do you think he has access to your account? It sounds paranoid to me, not that you've ever been accused of wearing a tinfoil hat.

 

[nootje]

just pay the guy a visit, most geeks( most hackers to me) are scared shitless when you confront them IRL

 

[A Canuker]

Originally Posted by GQgeek

does he have physical access to your computer? Or do you have a really easy password that's easy to guess? i haven't heard of anyone hacking hotmail or gmail. A Key logger/trojan is really the most likely scenario here.

Didn't Palin have her account cracked?

Also someone should add the THIS THREAD IS USELESS WITHOUT PICS.

 

[GQgeek]

Not really. The term hacked gets thrown around a lot without anyone using it properly. They guessed her password. That's not really hacking imo. Hacking, to me, involves exploiting a flaw in a system to gain access. They didn't exploit hotmail to gain access to her account. They basically just got lucky b/c her password was super-easy (birthday of kids or something). They may have used a program to plug in values to help with the guessing, but that's about it.

Exploiting someone that doesn't know how to operate a computer isn't what i'd qualify as hacking. There really aren't many people that are what i'd call "real" hackers. A lot of people are capable of installing keyloggers/trojans on your computer to get password info though. After all, that doesn't require any actual skill. They're just installing something that someone else wrote. Most hacking today involves exploiting users that don't know what they are doing, as most systems (especially big important ones) are pretty well secured.

 

[BrettChaotix]

GQ is right, same thing happened to Palin as Paris Hilton. They were idiots and used passwords that could be guessed. Probably a combination of family members names and birthdays. Paris used her dog's name. That's rule number 1 - use unique, impossible to guess passwords for each account you have. Never make your email account password the same as your bank, paypal, ebay.... for obvious reasons. There are no real exploits available for yahoo/hotmail/gmail/etc... the only options are attacking the end user via social engineering (that includes man-in-the-middle proxing, phishing and getting physical access to install keyloggers) it's already as easy as double-clicking to install a keylogger program but it's become even easier. They have adapters (both internal and external) that are installed on the victim's computers and retrieved at a later date. What should you do? Well if you haven't already changed the passwords AND "password hint" questions, I'd do that now. It might be worth creating new accounts to use from now on and setting the old accounts to forward email to them. Oh, and I'm assuming that you have the common sense to have installed AntiVirus and Anti-Spyware software and you update/run these programs on a regular basis.