The great Boards.ie hack in 2010

El Weirdo

Askaboutmoney runs on vBulletin, and as such, the passwords are “hashed”, so we don’t believe that they have accessed passwords.

Your use of quotation marks on that particular word may not fill people with much confidence.

GLaDOS

I haven't received that specific spam, or anything referencing my boards username. I'm not a member of AAM

Arthur Beesley

El Weirdo wrote: »

Your use of quotation marks on that particular word may not fill people with much confidence.

Along with all the other amateurishness on that site.

Zaph

Arthur Beesley wrote: »

Along with all the other amateurishness on that site.

Whatever your opinions of AAM may be, the Boards Feedback forum is not the place to air them.

Tenshot

I received the quoted spam message today, at an email address I used exclusively for my AAM account (I have my own domain, so tend to give each forum I register with a unique user at that domain, to make it easier to track spam).

(Of course, having AAM in the email ID made me think I was being spammed by the excellent Ask A Manager blog - I haven't been on AskAboutMoney for a while.)

Gone West

Hashed but not salted, eh?

muffler

the people reporting the spam to us used the same username and email address combination on askaboutmoney as they did here.

The above (taken from your notice) is not correct as stated previously in this thread.

I got the spam email but I used a different nick and email on AAM.

borderlinemeath

Got that spam to my email with my AAM username today.

jhegarty

Fuzzy wrote: »

Hashed but not salted, eh?

It would be both by default on vbulletin 3.

testicle

muffler wrote: »

The above (taken from your notice) is not correct as stated previously in this thread.

I got the spam email but I used a different nick and email on AAM.

Sure you don't have 2 AAM accounts?

Fey!

Agent Smith wrote: »

Randomly enough, I got a sms yesterday from "NewMessage" saying "You received a photo message, and to click some link sn.im etc to see me"

Now, I remember back in the day when boards had a tweet, thing, and You could enter your mobile.

Is it possiable they have gotten access to mobile numbers?

Wibbs wrote: »

FWIW AS I got the exact same text yesterday and I never gave Boards my phone number.

If that's the same one I got, it looks to be a fraud claiming to be from Dunnes and offering vouchers. Unfortunately the link times out quickly (or possibly can't be opened a second time). I have reported it to management and security in my local Dunnes, both of whom have sent it to HQ.

If you open this, please try and get a screen grab to show to Dunnes.

Digital Society

Theres no way they would just take the user table. They obviously would have just backed up the whole database an exported it. Upgrade Vbulletin or Migrate to XenForo. Someone has the thread and post table aswell. Change all Passwords immediately.

Hootanany

Im getting a shed load of mail undeivered lately from my email i subscribed to boards. Is it related?

Redsoxfan

I got an email addressed to my AAM username which was also my Boards username until the big shutdown.

Rucking_Fetard

LoLth wrote: »

Admin note

Please don't post content that contains your (or someone else's) email address. its just going to get crawled and your end up with even more spam!

That was checked out recently, on phone cant find it, by a guy sick of looking at people using [dot] and his email never got bombarded.

[Dot] NEVER made sense as u just had to have the crawler look for that instead/aswell.

dm09

Originally Posted by Agent Smith
Randomly enough, I got a sms yesterday from "NewMessage" saying "You received a photo message, and to click some link sn.im etc to see me"

Now, I remember back in the day when boards had a tweet, thing, and You could enter your mobile.

Is it possiable they have gotten access to mobile numbers?

Originally Posted by Wibbs
FWIW AS I got the exact same text yesterday and I never gave Boards my phone number.

I also got the exact same text the other day "You've received a picture message and an encoded link "sn.im..." , I checked the link on my laptop and it was to a porn site, probably smartphone malware, it was from a russian number +7 but I never gave my mobile number to boards or AAM and this is the first spam i've received on this number and i've had it 3 years, i also received another sms a day later from an unknown Czech number with just an 'X'

LynnGrace

Soarer wrote: »

Surely everyone knows when an unsolicited email appears offering to make "cold hard cash", it should be treated as spam?

I bin all unsolicited emails unopened. The one I received had my AAM username in the subject line, which would alert me immediately that it wasn't a normal email. I have never been contacted by email, by AAM.
As it happened, my email system automatically had thrown it into the 'junk' folder.

Insect Overlord

The mails I've been getting are coming from MyDailyFlog.

chinwag

How do you change a password on Boards?

Blowfish

chinwag wrote: »

How do you change a password on Boards?

Here

zagmund

dm09 wrote: »

[/I]


I also got the exact same text the other day "You've received a picture message and an encoded link "sn.im..." , I checked the link on my laptop and it was to a porn site, probably smartphone malware, it was from a russian number +7 but I never gave my mobile number to boards or AAM and this is the first spam i've received on this number and i've had it 3 years, i also received another sms a day later from an unknown Czech number with just an 'X'
[/I]

And as long as people continue doing this, the spammers will continue sending them.

You got a message from someone you've never heard of, sent from a Russian number (I'm guessing you're not in touch with people in Russia regularly), with a mysterious link in it and you clicked on it? All that was missing was a message saying "click here to see pictures of Anna Kournikova"

What warning signs might have convinced you not to click on it?

z

LoLth

zagmund wrote: »

And as long as people continue doing this, the spammers will continue sending them.

You got a message from someone you've never heard of, sent from a Russian number (I'm guessing you're not in touch with people in Russia regularly), with a mysterious link in it and you clicked on it? All that was missing was a message saying "click here to see pictures of Anna Kournikova"

What warning signs might have convinced you not to click on it?

z

have to agree with this. seriously, unless you are a professional AND you have a controlled environment you should never ever ever ever click on a link to an unknown source. Especially if you have reason to believe it may be malicious. Apart from any content on the far end of the link that you see, the act of clicking may serve to confirm your existence and tag you as a valid target for future spam / place you solidly on a list of confirmed numbers that can be sold to spambots owners or worse, people looking for hacking targets. Do you know what, if any, information your browser has shared with the server hosting the dodgy porn site?

rather dramatic I know but let me ask this: if you see liquid on the driveway under your car, do you flick matches at it / taste it to see if its petrol, diesel or water ? No. you file it away as "interesting, must get that checked by a professional if it gest worse/persists" (unless you are a mechanic yourself, in which case you don't just drop under the car in your Sunday best and start tinkering - unless your some sort of super action-mechanic but not even Mario went plumbing in a suit).

dm09

LoLth wrote: »

have to agree with this. seriously, unless you are a professional AND you have a controlled environment you should never ever ever ever click on a link to an unknown source. Especially if you have reason to believe it may be malicious. Apart from any content on the far end of the link that you see, the act of clicking may serve to confirm your existence and tag you as a valid target for future spam / place you solidly on a list of confirmed numbers that can be sold to spambots owners or worse, people looking for hacking targets. Do you know what, if any, information your browser has shared with the server hosting the dodgy porn site?

rather dramatic I know but let me ask this: if you see liquid on the driveway under your car, do you flick matches at it / taste it to see if its petrol, diesel or water ? No. you file it away as "interesting, must get that checked by a professional if it gest worse/persists" (unless you are a mechanic yourself, in which case you don't just drop under the car in your Sunday best and start tinkering - unless your some sort of super action-mechanic but not even Mario went plumbing in a suit).

As I said, I checked the link on my laptop, I have an old laptop running unix and I purposely did this as to not infect my phone with malware, i did not engage with the spam, that's the worse thing you can do, the link is shortened using the 'sn.im' service to duisguise it and help them get around the Mobile operators sms filter, so I wasn't aware of what the link was directing to until i entered in the laptop's browser..

dm09

zagmund wrote: »

And as long as people continue doing this, the spammers will continue sending them.

You got a message from someone you've never heard of, sent from a Russian number (I'm guessing you're not in touch with people in Russia regularly),

Actually I work for a Multinational company and get sms from unknown numbers from all around the world, as initially i was not aware the link was spam but the cautious side of me made me check it from a secure environment, but thanks for your concern...

Steve

Got the spam email from

Jane <info@ctbonline.messages3.com>

Gmail was good enough to dispatch it straight to the spam folder.

Also got an email this evening from Brendan to say AAM have implemented a forced password reset on next login.

tenifan

BrendanBurgess wrote: »

askaboutmoney.com:

As you have been banned and so cannot change your password, we will be deleting your account completely so that no record of your username, email, or any other information will be retained.

This raises a red flag for me. I could not access AAM thanks to the 3 strike rule (strike 1: misspelled a word; strike 2: entered incorrect password once; strike 3: sneezed), yet Brendan felt the need to hold on to my personal details including email address.

Surely this is against data protection laws. For shame! Strike one. The hacking. Strike 2. You're on thin ice Mr Burgess! Would you like to speculate on property prices? Go on, I dare ya!

Fred Swanson

This post has been deleted.

lgk

Fred Swanson wrote: »

This post has been deleted.

The Data Protection Commissioners are aware and are happy AAM are meeting or exceeding their requirements, but sure don't let that stop you grinding an axe...

muffler

lgk wrote: »

The Data Protection Commissioners are aware and are happy AAM are meeting or exceeding their requirements, but sure don't let that stop you grinding an axe...

....and you are speaking in an official capacity for who?

Rucking_Fetard

muffler wrote: »

....and you are speaking in an official capacity for who?

I think getting "axe" in there was the goal.