Recent Attack

[mole999]

I have received an email allegedly from Bill Jelen of this forum.

I am now reading, via this thread, of an attack on this form which has resulted in obtaining users emails and passwords.

I am very concerned and annoyed to read that this attack happened over a month ago and yet I have only been informed today. Not being a regular visitor I would not have seen the warnings provided and now learn that my details have been in the hands of criminals for over a month.

Bill did send the emails. Any domain or forum that anyone uses is likely to be attacked at sometime in someones lifetime. The straight advice is to change your password you use here, and make sure you don't use the same password on any other site. Nothing to be annoyed about, it is part of the privilege of having universal data across the world, and a fallibility of being human (IMHO)

 

[Cindy Ellis]

FYI, the email from Bill Jelen went directly to my "Spam" folder; I found it only because this thread mentioned that he had sent an email.
I wonder if there's a way to contact major email providers (e.g. gmail & yahoo) when a bulk message is going out, to prevent it from being flagged as spam.

I only use my mrexcel password for mrexcel.com, but changed it anyway based on the original banner message last month, but I appreciate the additional information that was contained in the email.

 

[MrExcel]

J.Ty: Installing SSL today.

Cindy Ellis: Thanks for the note about spam. I learned that all of my accounts (Office 365, gmail) have a rule that says you can not send to more than 5,000 unique external recipients in a day. Thus, I had to find something that would let me send to more than 100,000 people. Either that sending tool was already in gmail's spam rules or they figured it out quickly. I am waiting for people to arrive back to work on Tuesday in the USA. If the passwords are not changed by then, we will force new passwords. As I understand it, resetting the password sends out another e-mail.

The other observation. There are a lot of people who signed up here in say, 2004. They asked one question. One follow up, for a total of two posts. Then, they get an e-mail from me, and of course no one can remember what password they used at an obscure website 13 years ago. There have been a lot of people who wanted to know what email they used, but even I can't tell that. All I see is the hash+salt.

For those interested in Hash+Salt, the leakedsource website shows mine as:
[password] => a5402005faa46974570a2323207a7f78
[salt] => 4tO+3U%4ln(pHK],@!~(-(29_oTQn}
This looks nothing like my real password of Lotus123
(that is not my real password, of course. But my real password is 8-12 characters.

LeakedSource also shows a great history of all hacking attempts of my e-mail. I didn't even know I had an account at Vertical Scope Network or FourSquare, but my info has been stolen from there. It is worth a stop for their free results.

 

[Legacy 383193]

How do I delete my account?

 

[RoryA]

Use the Contact Us link at the bottom of the page and ask for it to be closed.

 

[FDibbins]

I have changed my password, of course! My issue is with the banner that I do not recall having seen. If I managed to 'miss' seeing it, then it was not as conspicuous as it needed to be. Just sayin' ...

The banner was pointed out to me too, after I asked. After I saw it, my response was that there is often so much advertising in that space, that I paid it no attention. The banner is 2 lines of bolded large font text, the fact that I did not notice it, is not really the forum's fault, I must carry some of the blame for not paying it any attention

 

[Legacy 383193]

Thank you!

 

[mole999]

The banner was pointed out to me too, after I asked. After I saw it, my response was that there is often so much advertising in that space, that I paid it no attention. The banner is 2 lines of bolded large font text, the fact that I did not notice it, is not really the forum's fault, I must carry some of the blame for not paying it any attention

in IE its bold blue font on white, in firefox it has a salmon pink background