Hotmail hacking attack

[mooncliff]

I know 9 people who use Hotmail. In the last week, 5 of them suddenly started sending me spam after their accounts were hacked. They do not know each other and so I am guess there is some kind of massive hacking going on. Romney's Hotmail account seems to have been hacked a month ago?

If you are using Hotmail, I suggest you set up another mail account like gmail or macmail or whatever, and then go into your Hotmail and register that other email address so that if your account is hacked, they will be able to email you the code to unblock the Hotmail account. If you dont do this, you might have great difficulty getting back into your account after it has been hacked.

Microsoft bought Hotmail in 1998, and just as Gates said, as you can see, he put an end to spam. Embarrassingly typical. This has consumed hours of my time, and I dont even use Hotmail.

As a final step, start moving out of Hotmail and use something that is likely to be more reliable... which is just about anything else.

Make sure your password is long and not guessable. The easiest method to make a long sentence like
When I was 5, my dog Fluffy died. She was black and white and had a long tail.
So then your password would be
WIw5mdFdSwbawahalt
Something like that should be easy to remember and be very difficult for a program to automatically hack by trying all common passwords.

[globaleconomicollaps]

Re: Hotmail hacking attack

Microsoft bought Hotmail in 1998, and just as Gates said, as you can see, he put an end to spam.

I use skype which was recently bought by Microsoft. A few days ago I tried to use the terrific screen sharing feature of skype with me friend. It seems that the screen share is now a premium feature and you have to pay for it. I reinstalled a version of skype from a few months ago and I'm back in action, but sooner or later a security problem will be found in the old version and I will be forced to "upgrade". I kind of have mixed emotions about this. One the one hand, Skype as a free product costs money to make and maintain and Microsoft should be able to charge for some aspect of the software to recupe costs. One the other hand, They are already charging for "call phone", answering service and call forwarding. For them to be removing functionality and forcing upgrades on people ( see the terms of service ) is ... not nice.

[mooncliff]

Re: Hotmail hacking attack

Yes, it was free for quite some time, then they started to charge for certain services that were previously free. I subscribe to the worldwide calling plan, which is about $180 a year, and lets me call most telephones and cell phones in Europe, N America, Asia, and Australia unlimited, which is fantastic and totally reasonable.

I just wish Microsoft would actually debug its stuff before forcing everyone to buy what are essentially beta versions and then waste everyone's time. I have, but usually don't use, a Windows machine, and yet, because everyone else is using Windows, and I am the computer nerd, I have spent, and I kid you not, hundreds of hours fixing their problems. This includes a $30,000 stolen credit card data problem. Just today, I spent an hour fixing a messed up Windows machine that is slow as molasses... it took, and I timed it, half an hour to go through the updates and virus scans. I wonder how much time Microsoft has wasted of everyone's time? When I consider how much I get paid by how many hours Microsoft problems have taken, I estimate they have wasted $30,000 of my time that I will never get back. That is why I really dont care how much an iPad costs me. The cost of the hardware is trivial compared to the lost time. Nothing is going to be perfect, but they really should be able to cut down this wasted time by 90%. Everything they do is to make money rather than make a quality product. Gaming the system instead of just doing a decent job.

[flintlock]

Re: Hotmail hacking attack

My 14 year old son started sending me work at home links. Hotmail account of course.

[charliebrown]

Re: Hotmail hacking attack

That has been MS's business model since its inception. Remember OS2? A fine robust operating system, then microsoft put it out of business by promising the moon and giving us windows 95. I have been switched, from a unix programmer at work to a microsoft programmer. What really torks me is if you look at their documentation for microsoft API's they are incomplete. Most of the time failure modes are not discussed or ducumented. If you grew up in this millieu you think nothing is wrong.
I grew up in a mainframe and unix world, where failing software was unacceptable. I'm not sure they are careless in this or they use it as a way to sell professional services. If they make it hard to program, you will get buggy software. There are so many layers in this new world that intermittent bugs are extreemely difficult to track and remove. Then we have the ever changing windows office suite to generate revenue, even though office 98 was fine for typing just about anything.

If Bill Gates really wanted to be a benefactor he would hire a few good programmers, and just clean up his software products, and do it gratis. It would only be a few million in programming costs.

[Mn_Mark]

Re: Hotmail hacking attack

I use skype which was recently bought by Microsoft. A few days ago I tried to use the terrific screen sharing feature of skype with me friend. It seems that the screen share is now a premium feature and you have to pay for it. I reinstalled a version of skype from a few months ago and I'm back in action, but sooner or later a security problem will be found in the old version and I will be forced to "upgrade". I kind of have mixed emotions about this. One the one hand, Skype as a free product costs money to make and maintain and Microsoft should be able to charge for some aspect of the software to recupe costs. One the other hand, They are already charging for "call phone", answering service and call forwarding. For them to be removing functionality and forcing upgrades on people ( see the terms of service ) is ... not nice.

You can still do screen-sharing, you just have to turn off your camera first. You can only do one or the other at one time - share your screen, or have your vid camera running. When you are done screen-sharing, stop sharing and turn the camera back on.

[goodrich4bk]

Re: Hotmail hacking attack

Good idea. And sorry about your dog.

[c1ue]

Re: Hotmail hacking attack

I'm no fan of Microsoft, but this type of problem is hardly unique to that company.

For that matter, the password is more than likely irrelevant.

If I were to guess, what is far more likely is someone created a program which uses Java to manipulate Hotmail in a browser. Why bother trying to steal an email password when you ultimately just want to shoot out spam from the email account?

The only way to stop this type of attack is to disable almost all active types of access - which is highly inconvenient and annoying.

[Slimprofits]

Re: Hotmail hacking attack

I'm no fan of Microsoft, but this type of problem is hardly unique to that company.

For that matter, the password is more than likely irrelevant.

If I were to guess, what is far more likely is someone created a program which uses Java to manipulate Hotmail in a browser. Why bother trying to steal an email password when you ultimately just want to shoot out spam from the email account?

The only way to stop this type of attack is to disable almost all active types of access - which is highly inconvenient and annoying.

How is this done on a computer that is not shared, but is connected to the internet? Spyware?

[Slimprofits]

Re: Hotmail hacking attack

Make sure your password is long and not guessable. The easiest method to make a long sentence like
When I was 5, my dog Fluffy died. She was black and white and had a long tail.
So then your password would be
WIw5mdFdSwbawahalt
Something like that should be easy to remember and be very difficult for a program to automatically hack by trying all common passwords.

That's cute and very creative but with so many long passwords, I use Bruce Schneir's Password Safe to generate and store them. Another option is Lastpass.

[c1ue]

Re: Hotmail hacking attack

How is this done on a computer that is not shared, but is connected to the internet? Spyware?

The same way people get viruses, trojans, and other malware on your computer.