My Gmail Account Hacked/spoofed

[mikex]

Ok it has finally happened....

I get up this morniing check mail. I have my gmail forwarded to my main mail. I see that around one am I sent my self an email. subject was 6 numbers, body was 3 numbers..... freaked me out. Guess what I am doing today? You got it trying to get to all places that I used that password to login, change passwords.

Once someone has your username/login they can make a world of pain for you. I have been saying to myself that I needed to start changing my passwords, try to do it yearly, have been to lazy afterwork. See where that gets me. lol

Moral:

Make strong passwords.

Keep passwwords very private.

Take the sticky notes off the monitor. (I don't do the sticky note thing)

Change passwords

Keep reading this thread, I'm sure there will be lots more good info posted.

M

[jsbowen]

Spoofing the from address is quite common and quite easy to do. It doesn't necessarily mean that your account was broken in to.

http://www.besttechie.net/forums/index.php...wtopic=8764&hl=

[mikex]

Understand it may not have been hacked, but want to enlighten others.

M

[shanenin]

I had that same thing happen to me yesterday evening.

//edit added

Doest that mean someone knows my password? Is thier someother way people can do that?

Edited June 7, 2006 by shanenin

[iccaros]

to send you an emial only requires ftp (you ftp into the server and drop and email in the folder) ..

to get email from an account is what normaly requires some real hacking.

now a lot of email server require password for both so the ftp thing may not work on gmail, but to send an email through my email server, have it put the header that its yours is not hard and requires I know nothing other than your email address.

[TheTerrorist_75]

You weren't hacked and your email is still secure as long as you didn't open the email. It was a computer generated email that sent a small bot that when opened sends a response back letting the spammer know that the account is real and active. This will add that address to a spammer list.

[shanenin]

I read the email, so I guess you could say it was opened.

[TheTerrorist_75]

I read the email, so I guess you could say it was opened.

I right clicked on it then selected properties to see what was contained in the email. I never open any emails if they are suspicious (as in this case), forwarded, have an attachment or are from an unknown source. I always scan with my anti-virus and use properties to check them. Panda will strip viruses and Trojans from emails as they arrive in my Inbox. It also warns me if an email contains one of these small "bots" that wish to send a confirmation back. Not many anti-virus programs will warn of this tactic.

[Matt]

I've read this thread a couple times now, and I'm unsure on what the real issue is..

Was it:

A. You received an email with an attachment, you opened it, and now someone has your password.

or

B. You received an email with an attachment, you opened it, and it sent back information to the sender, and you are now on a spam list.

lol I may be dense right now, but I couldn't figure it out.

Matt

[shanenin]

I recieved an email, that seems to be just plain text, no attachment, that contained the message "5556"

[TheTerrorist_75]

Someone from the IP address 211.199.139.35 is sending phony emails that have yourself listed as the sender with a subject line containing just numbers. I made a thread about this in Security Alerts yesterday. The email had a 1KB html tag within it. I assume when opened it gets reported back that the email address is real and active. This could leave you open to more spam or worse.

[jsbowen]

to send you an emial only requires ftp (you ftp into the server and drop and email in the folder) ..

to get email from an account is what normaly requires some real hacking.

now a lot of email server require password for both so the ftp thing may not work on gmail, but to send an email through my email server, have it put the header that its yours is not hard and requires I know nothing other than your email address.

Spoofing the From address in an email and sending it along doesn't take a FTP server, it only requires access to an email server that allows email to be sent with that address. Now, you could setup your own email server to send these messages or find one of the 40 blue million open relays on the net to do this for you. No hacking skills are needed to do what the OP posted about.

Of course, if you view the headers or have SPF enabled, you would notice that the From domain and the IP don't match.

Short of the story, if you receive a message from yourself that you didn't send, it is junk and should be treated as such. Don't initially jump to the worst conclusion