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* I received an interesting e-mail this morning…
Below is what I got when trying to look up revenue numbers on the Fiscal Inquiry section of the Comptroller’s website.
The link to the hacked page is here. But be warned, there’s profanity, so don’t get yourself in trouble at work.
An official with the comptroller’s office said the hacker couldn’t access the main frame, so no data was compromised. The Inspector General is investigating.
* In related news, one of my e-mail accounts was hijacked this morning. All they appeared to have done was change my password, though. No e-mails were sent from my account. I hope I caught it quickly enough.
The hackers got access to my account when they changed my password by answering my secret question, which, in retrospect was a stupid secret question: “In what town were you born?” Pretty much anyone can find out that answer.
* The Question: Have you or your business/agency ever been hacked? Explain.
posted by Rich Miller
Monday, Sep 17, 12 @ 11:07 am
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There’s a really good write up of an elegant hack of a Wired.com editor that didn’t require any tech vulnerabilities, only human ones. It’s at http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/08/apple-amazon-mat-honan-hacking/.
Comment by thechampaignlife Monday, Sep 17, 12 @ 11:40 am
At work we found our system being used to send emails and malware. Our network was simply sloooww with too many screw ups. It took awhile to figure it out. After investing in some quality screening software and devices, we got it under control. We check the logs regularly now. It is amazing the thousands of emails and other items it simply kicks out that previously got through. Well worth the investment.
At home I got stung several years ago. Now I just completely rebuild/reformat the hard drives about once a year, get some good utilities software (using Advanced Systemcare with antivirus these days),and get rid of junk I simply do not use anymore. Just converted to Win7 several months ago. Seems to work.
Comment by zatoichi Monday, Sep 17, 12 @ 12:00 pm
home. found something placed on my computer that would not affect it but would affect other computers with which I would communicate. removed it. when I got a new computer got better virus protection software.
Comment by amalia Monday, Sep 17, 12 @ 12:19 pm
Apparently, almost nobody’s been hacked. Good!
Comment by Rich Miller Monday, Sep 17, 12 @ 12:51 pm
Yeah, recently some script kiddies hijacked my entire email address book thru injection via a Yahoo email account. I belong to a few Yahoo groups and many in those groups has got hit the same way. The miscreants so far only use it to send common sales spam messages, and have not been back since I took new precautions and changed passwords. Yahoo refuses to acknowledge a problem. It is sporadic in striking. I beat it by altering every address in my book with an extra character that I have to manually remove before I hit “send”, so now the addresses look dead and thus unwanted… plus, I no longer leave my email logged on when I’m not using it.
Comment by Newsclown Monday, Sep 17, 12 @ 12:53 pm
Never been hacked.
I attribute it to four factors:
1) pseudonym use (e.g. no “real” place of birth or mother’s maiden name to find),
2) multiple anti-malware schemes (e.g. Avast, Spybot-S&D etc., all set for automated searches & updates)
3) scrupulous password hygiene (a unique password for each important site), and (most importantly)
4) utter disinterest (no one cares enough to target me).
– MrJM
Comment by MrJM Monday, Sep 17, 12 @ 12:57 pm
Ironically, thechampaignlife, your comment was initially blocked by my anti-spam app. lol
Comment by Rich Miller Monday, Sep 17, 12 @ 12:59 pm
I have had a program/virus?/hacker take over my email addresses and send out spam under my name. I researched this and found out that this is not uncommon and it sometimes cannot be stopped. If the program is set up to be resident on your computer some virus scans programs can find it.
But if it only accesses your computer and uses your email address book it cannot be stopped.
In my case it was the latter. The only option I had was to change my email address or eliminate my address book. I chose to do the latter keeping it in another location under another name. It seems to have helped. Apparently spammers do this to have a legitimate address at the beginning of their send addresses on their spam. this gets the spam through some filters.
Comment by Irish Monday, Sep 17, 12 @ 1:53 pm
My Facebook account was hacked once. I was able to get in and change the password quickly. For anything on the web I use Firefox with the LastPass extension, letting it generate and remember complicated passwords. It has made my life much easier.
At work the system forces everyone to change passwords every few months and has complexity requirements. One the one hand, that’s wise. On the other, too many people have to write down their password and leave it near their computer, which defeats the purpose.
Comment by Earnest Monday, Sep 17, 12 @ 2:26 pm
Apropos of nothing, I like Dwayne Wise leading off better than hitting 3.
The dude who saved Buehrle’s perfecto just had a two-out base hit to tie the Tiggers at 3-3 in the 4th.
Comment by wordslinger Monday, Sep 17, 12 @ 2:36 pm
@wordslinger….despite Cabrera’s batting, I’ll take Youk at the hot corner.
Comment by amalia Monday, Sep 17, 12 @ 3:29 pm
and this ballgame is OVAH!!!!!!!!!
Comment by amalia Monday, Sep 17, 12 @ 4:19 pm
Yes, I have had my email address book hacked. I have also notified friends when their accounts were hacked (usually to send spam emails).
Comment by Esquire Monday, Sep 17, 12 @ 6:07 pm
As I understand it; you don’t catch the expert hackers. I suggest everyone who has great faith in their security software read the statement they skipped over when installing it. You know the one I mean. The one with the box you checked for “I Accept”.
Comment by Anon. Monday, Sep 17, 12 @ 7:13 pm
A Facebook friend of my wife had his Facebook account hacked. The hacker posted a fake confession saying that he had killed his wife and that his life was ruined. Sad thing was that quite a few of his friends thought it might have been a legitimate post.
Comment by thechampaignlife Monday, Sep 17, 12 @ 7:56 pm
One Saturday not quite a year ago I sleepily got up about 5 a.m. to let the dogs out and went online to check on e-mail and stuff while waiting for them to finish. When I got to the blog, I was jolted awake by the sight of a Guy Fawkes mask covering the screen instead of the usual front page. According to activity logs, it had taken about 19 minutes in two sessions to hack my admin account and they’d tried to access the associated e-mail account as well.
Comment by yinn Monday, Sep 17, 12 @ 9:04 pm
Amalia, huge win, absolutely huge. Robin brought in Nate Jones early and that Kentucky boy did some really heavy lifting.
Up 3, 16 to go. Let’s get fat in Kansas City, for once.
I like Youk, but Cabrera is the best hitter in baseball. He’s the Frank Thomas of his day.
Comment by wordslinger Tuesday, Sep 18, 12 @ 8:10 am