IT Security Ask the Experts. Top Problems

January 3, 2009 Computer Safety Tip

Hotmail Account Is Sending Messages on Its Own: headache
Every day at a certain time, Sam’s Hotmail account sends over 100 emails which he has not sent personally. Most of the auto-emails are returned as undeliverable. And how can Sam stop these unofficial emails from being sent from his account? The experts agreed that Sam may be looking at a Trojan or bot on his system. It might even be something called a Joe Job, in which emails are sent by a user pretending to be him. Alternatively, a spammer somewhere may be using Sam’s Hotmail account.

“Friend” Steals Email Account:
One of Tanya’s friends has gotten her email password and read her emails. Tanya can no longer log into her account. Tanya’s friend also succeeded in changing the password. How can she access her email again? One expert suggested that Tanya’s first move should be to call her email provider, identify herself convincingly, explain her problem and let the ISP sort it out. However, another contributor noted that if Tanya is using free email like live.com or Hotmail she may not be able to identify herself, since she never identified herself to them in the first place. If Tanya can’t reclaim her account, perhaps she should speak with an attorney and see if the legal eagle will send her “friend” a demand letter to get her account back.
My Brother Is Insane:
Someone is hacking into Claire’s elderly mother’s email account. Claire thinks it’s her brother. In any case, this person (whoever he or she is) forwards altered versions of original emails to other family members, which is creating severe friction. Claire also suspects that this person has accessed her AOL account remotely â€” and to make matters even more alarming, Claire has noticed an additional “ghost” mouse arrow crawling over her screen while her own mouse arrow is busy somewhere else.
One of our contributors suggested that the ghost mouse may reveal a remote desktop session, and noted that Claire’s brother may be using this service to spy on her, which could be how she got her passwords in the first place. For starters, Claire should check her PC’s firewall to see if port 3389 is open.
Sending Porn to Ourselves:
While performing a business-related online search at work, Mary clicked on one of the links that appeared … and a porn picture popped up. She exited the page immediately and closed her browser. Nonetheless, within a couple of days her company started receiving email with porn-related subject lines â€” and strangest of all, these nasty emails seemed to be coming from Mary’s email address. It’s not unusual to receive spam with forged headers making it look as though you sent it to yourself. It was suggested that Mary run a thorough virus scan and a scan for spyware using something like Spybot or AdAware. But if all of those prove negative, it may simply be that her email address is being used as the from address by spammers â€” in which case there’s not much she can do.
DVD Tray Pops In and Out. Is a Virus Responsible?:
There have been several inquiries suggesting that Defender Pro had caused CDs to explode inside users’ PCs’ players. Although no one is particularly happy with this dreadful anti-virus app, it’s not clear how it could destroy a CD. Its been wondered whether a virus might be accountable. One of the experts doubted that it’s a virus at all. Another contributor recommended that they check whether the DVD eject button is stuck. If it’s stuck right on the cusp of the button trigger, vibrations could tip it over to one side or the other. Other than that, the problem may be corrupted drivers.
Caroline Did a Very Bad Thing:
Caroline hacked into her husband’s ex-wife’s email account to find inside information that she could use in a court battle to get full custody of her son. Now the ex-wife suspects Caroline and her husband of doing something mischevious. Caroline wonders if there’s any way the ex-wife can prove, on her own, that it was her. And most importantly, was what Carly did actually illegal? What are the laws in California about this kind of thing? Most jurisdictions have laws that specifically address unauthorized access to computer data.