My Experiences: After my email was Hacked

do one thing - after logging to gmail check the "Last account activity" which will show you the last 5 logins and their ip addresses. you will get the ip address of the hacker from that. use it to lodge a complaint. maybe if indian police are good it will become an international alert to nab that hacker. else nothing much will come out of it. dont leave that chance though.
 
S@ndeep said:
Damn... Real bad dude. Those hackers should get proper punishment. :mad:
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Dude!! People from that 'country' who have done much much worse things than hacking someone's email live in ultimate luxury. You really think the 'country' cares?
 
Would you consider yourself a software techie ?

The point of my question was to determine how easy it would be for this to happen to techincally aware ppl vs less aware :)
 
blr_p said:
Would you consider yourself a software techie ?

The point of my question was to determine how easy it would be for this to happen to techincally aware ppl vs less aware :)
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Oh ok... I am technically aware and would call myself a techie...infact all my friends come to advice from me for anything related to computers...and in my collage days used to chase popular virus to check what it does and how it works....

I am very fond of programming...and tools and utilities are my hobby/speciality...I have countless utilties designed and developed for Office intranet use / personal use...few of them exploit lack of security in networks...

few of them use extensive web page handling and understanding of how many sites are laid out...

for instance have one called 'Google Image downloader'....used to download images from google search for any search criteria list....I use it to download pictures of say animals...to show to my little daughter...instead of clicking one at a time to see the full picture...

have tools to download entire wallpaper sites (only wallpaper)...for instance on pixelgirlpresents.com

have one personal tool to scan entire network recursively looking for shared folders on office network and build a searchable tree...its a great time pass tool...can get songs / fwd from network without looking for ways to bringing it in ...:hap2:

so on....
 
OK, very good, so if this happened to you then it could happen to anyone.

The next question is..

..have you zeroed in on the cause ?
 
OK, very good, so if this happened to you then it could happen to anyone.

The next question is..

..have you zeroed in on the cause ?
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Interesting to note in almost all your post, you always answer with a question? :) An almost clinical analysis of the post you are responding to, ending mostly with question.
Heh and the samples were based on yours and Yamaraj discussion the other day :)
 
Thing is its not certain yet whether pass was cracked or some other method was used. If other, then pass length wont make any diff.

That's why i asked whether the OP was a techie otherwise its easy to say some n00b goofed up and its not possible to happen to you.
 
blr_p said:
OK, very good, so if this happened to you then it could happen to anyone.

The next question is..

..have you zeroed in on the cause ?
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I am not able to zero in on the cause...this makes me mad....and paranoid....to think of an open door available for a hacker to enter my system...and i dont know how to close it. :mad:

to be safe ...i am going to format the OS partition and install freshly..and adopt the suggestions made on this thread.
 
I used to try getting other account password but by using a simple trick.

We normally get the programs to do this from the net for free.

I'll tell you how I did it.

I used to put a client program on the victims computer. this client program had settings by which i could specify my email host settings.

now what happens is that whoever uses this computer , whatever the victim typed along with passwords, email addresses, website url's etc all used to be sent automatically to my email server, and there i was with all email addresses and their passwords.

of course I did not misuse any , and this this was long time ago. The client program could very well be hosted online on a website, and can be downloaded automatically , like plugins etc from the malicious site you may be visiting.

and if it is not detected by your antivirus or spyware , you'r activities get logged.

I would suggest you to use a antivirus which had intusion detection, firwall, network scanning, features. And always keep antivirus updated, update windows regularly as well.

And yeah one more thing, when typing passwords, make sure you mistype it once or twice, backspace it and then type it, sometime helps if keyloggers installed.

just my 2 cents.
 
mahistuffs said:
I have 2 gmail accounts one I use for regular communication and one the 2nd for *ahem* other stuffs like torrents etc to my surprise the 2nd account was not logging in…I use firefox for primary browsing…and have the 2nd account in IE 8.0 as homepage with password saved..Btw my OS is Windows XP..and use Nod32 Smart security.
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Using IE8 for the 2nd account tells me all it would take is for you to be tricked into viewing a dodgy page and your browsers contents is wide open. I'd imagine its possible to pull all your *ahem* password from this way regardless of how long it was.

THing is you said you only use IE8 to login for gmail and firefox for browsing which implies if this was the method used than FF was vulnerable somehow.

Can FF be made to run activex ?
mahistuffs said:
I unlocked my 2nd account and found that the first thing the hacker has done was to use the forgot password option on paypal…

….and after that he has gone to almost all the torrent sites I am a member and has used the recover password option to get new passwords for the account…he had taken over my seed box with a call log for a fresh ip/password…
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Right, all he needed to get was the password to your 2nd *ahem* gmail account and everything else was there for the taking.
mahistuffs said:
:huh: I don’t have the faintest idea on how this would have happened.
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- does your modem run in bridge mode or NAT mode ?
- did you use IE to view any sites someone recommended. The browser needs to be activex capable. Receive any invitations recently from friends to join them somewhere ?
- did you run any software or tool given to you by someone. Thing is you're a techie so you'd know not to do that without at least virus checking it first. and you do run one already.
- you did not mention any IM apps you use, this is one way to get exe's quickly.
- Do you play online games ?...is there anyway this person might be known to you via IM or gaming where presumably you would use the same ID.

Look at your past emails for the last 2-3 months or IM logs if possible.

I think the chance of a totally unknown hacker getting to you is less than an online acquaintance.
 
blr_p said:
Using IE8 for the 2nd account tells me all it would take is for you to be tricked into viewing a dodgy page and your browsers contents is wide open. I'd imagine its possible to pull all your *ahem* password from this way regardless of how long it was.

THing is you said you only use IE8 to login for gmail and firefox for browsing which implies if this was the method used than FF was vulnerable somehow.

Can FF be made to run activex ?
Right, all he needed to get was the password to your 2nd *ahem* gmail account and everything else was there for the taking.

- does your modem run in bridge mode or NAT mode ?
- did you use IE to view any sites someone recommended. The browser needs to be activex capable. Receive any invitations recently from friends to join them somewhere ?
- did you run any software or tool given to you by someone. Thing is you're a techie so you'd know not to do that without at least virus checking it first. and you do run one already.
- you did not mention any IM apps you use, this is one way to get exe's quickly.
- Do you play online games ?...is there anyway this person might be known to you via IM or gaming where presumably you would use the same ID.

Look at your past emails for the last 2-3 months or IM logs if possible.

I think the chance of a totally unknown hacker getting to you is less than an online acquaintance.
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- Modem in NAT mode
- I received invitations to join but it was in the 1st account and not the second...but I think i have clicked few links from the 2nd account recently..it could have been the mistake
- no recent new softwares were run
- i dont chat much...but use yahoo messanger rarely..it has only 4 contacts..
- Nope i dont play online games..
 
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