This morning I woke up with multiple phone calls asking me why my email is sending messages saying that I am in London, just got robbed and please send me money! The people who called knew I wasn’t in London so obviously my Hotmail account was Hacked. This wasn’t the first time my hotmail account has sent out malicious junk. I don’t want to close my account so I have been researching how this happened and what to do next with the following results.
HOW IT HAPPENS
I don’t have a definitive answer, but I do have a theory which, based on the evidence, looks likely. If your password is a common name or a word that appears in a dictionary, then your account is vulnerable, even if it has a year of birth or number attached to it.
This is how the hackers do it:
- They employ an automated script that is fed your Hotmail address and then goes to work./li>
- It feeds the entire dictionary and common passwords and names into Hotmail one by one, trying to log in.
- After several attempts Hotmail “locks” the account and present a CAPTHCA (i.e. a string of wonky letters and numbers that are supposed to stop scripts from doing exactly that, because only a human can read these letters, supposedly).
- Unfortunately the CAPTCHA method no longer stops scripts, because hackers have found ways around them. One of those ways works by using sophisticated character recognition software that can read the wonky letters. Another is to feed the letters to “CAPTHCA farms” – the letters are fed to human users, employed by the hackers to read and enter CAPTCHAS, and they are often paid by the number of CAPTCHAs they enter (for example 1 cent per entry). This becomes viable financially if the spam is part of a bigger scam. The scale of the deception means it makes more money, especially because people are much more likely to trust spam messages sent by their friends. This achieves greater returns for the hackers and means they can attack many accounts, bypassing email security systems.
- Sometimes the scripts do their work over days, and sometimes weeks, to escape being caught by Hotmail’s attack detection systems.
There are of course other ways for hackers to achieve this kind of attack, such as spyware on your computer, or you being deceived by a rogue website. My instructions below would help you tackle these as well.
WHAT SHOULD I DO IF MY HOTMAIL ACCOUNT GOT HACKED?
Go through the following steps, one by one:
1. Before you do anything else, change your Hotmail account password to something very safe. Not a dictionary word or name, or even a word and numbers. Use symbols such as $ and & in your password, and make it long. I know it is difficult to remember, but if you don’t want to be hacked, you’ll have to start using strong passwords.
2. Now check that your autoresponse and email signature on Hotmail do not have any spam text added to them, as this would go out to your contacts automatically.
3. Then check that your computer does not have spyware or viruses.
4. From now on keep your passwords safe, and be extra careful when using public computers (such as those in Internet cafes). If in doubt – change your passwords.
5. You may want to alert Hotmail support to the problem. It seems to be happening all over the place, and the more they know about it, the better it is for their efforts to address it.
