Re: Need advice about hacking and security

From: Harry the Furry Squid (edward.asquith@durham.ac.uk)
Date: 10/28/02 

From: "Harry the Furry Squid" <edward.asquith@durham.ac.uk>
Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2002 18:30:11 -0000

"darlene" <dlor60@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:83724cbc.0210280109.db1dc12@posting.google.com...
> If anyone can please give me some insight about some computer issues,
> I would appreciate it.
>
> Since I've had my used computer for about 2 years, I've had my privacy
> violated to the extreme. All of my email accounts - Hotmail, Yahoo,
> my Outlook, my personal files have been tampered with. The sites
> where I frequent, some sock puppet apparently take personal info from
> personal emails and post them in their messages. I receive offensive
> purported porno 'opt-in' emails that I did not subscribe to - even
> within a few hours of creating a brand new email account. I also get
> taunted by a psycho cyberstalker who puts her name in the 'subject' or
> email address of porno junkmail to make it appear to be unsolicited
> spam.
>
> I frequently get these prompts "...computer shut down by the remote
> computer," "Password or access denied by the remote computer" or if
> I'm using a program I'll get kicked out accompanied by the message
> that says something to the effect of it "being used by 'another
> user'."
>
> What can I do about all of this? I have 3 suspicions as to who is
> behind this crap and all have their motives, but I would like to know
> what are the legal ramifications?

I can't see anything here that indicates that anyone has the slightest
interest in harassing you. The email is the kind of spam that everyone gets
(I've had plenty of personally addressed XXX email that I certainly didn't
sign up for in the past). You can alleviate this by:

Not posting your real email address anywhere (OK, so I'm a hypocrite ;-) )
Not signing up for anything unless you trust the site to keep your address
private
Checking all boxes that legally prevent your address being distributed
Make sure your spam filters (for Hotmail etc) are active, and your profile
is not visible to the public
Using a separate account (even a one-time account) to sign up for anything
that doesn't have a strong privacy policy
Never requesting that you be unsubscribed if you receive unsolicited email
(it just confirms your email address)

... and so on. Common sense really. I've implemented most of these, and I
get perhaps 1 or 2 spam email messages a day at the most - I could get none
at all if I eliminated these by blocking the sender, but I'm too lazy, and
besides, I like the idea of a diploma or PhD in exchange for some money :-D
(does everyone get that one?)

As for the second paragraph, I still don't see anything particularly
convincing. You can clean your computer effectively with a format and start
over, but that's a bit drastic. I'd settle for:

Scan your machine for viruses with MacAffee VS or equivalent - scan
/everything/.
Set the Virus Scanner up to check your incoming email. Most scanners will
integrate with Outlook or OE quite happily. Ditch the preview pane. Never
open any attachment you aren't expecting. If in doubt, check with the
purported sender first. Remember that anyone can read your mail unless you
encrypt it, but if you encrypt it it'll probably be the government reading
it instead of your local sysadmin. (Not to make you paranoid or anything,
but encryption probably sets off warning bells in the monitoring networks)
Scan your machine with AdAware
Install all necessary OS and Office patches, but read about what they do
first.
Install a firewall, and sandbox any known security risks such as MS Office,
Web browsers and Email clients. I use Tiny Personal Firewall 3.0 for this.
Make sure your firewall is configured correctly, and check which ports are
open to the world. Then search the web to check their function. If you're
suspicious about an app, check it out, or in extremis block the port and see
what stops working. Use Task manager to check which processes are running.
You should be able to identify the function of each and every one.

If anything gets through that I'd be very surprised. Despite a permanent
internet connection, I've never had a sniff of a virus, although I've nailed
a few port scanners.

There really aren't any legal ramifications. There would have to be some
significant evidence of attack, and probably evidence of resultant harm
before any action could be taken. If you implement the proper precautions,
you'll be safe enough.

HTH, HAND.