ACCOUNT HACKING ATTEMPTS, MERGED THREAD

I’ve spent years fighting off Chinese spammers. And other regions too, to be fair. Of course you have a point about ensuring you use a robust password in the first place (hence the locked account emails Key send out – they failed to crack the passwords!) but they are using all sorts of IP proxies to thwart forum antispam software. I recently got a “locked account email” from a Mac forum I hadn’t posted in since 2005. The IP address was for Dublin.

One thing that seems to attract these ‘account hacks’ is a dormant account – some of the ones here have not been used in a while as reported by the account owners. This is attractive to the spammers as the password could be a weak one due to the early days of forums etc. Spamming from hijacked accounts was not a workaround then – they just bombarded forums with spam from new registrations due to the lack of any real anti-spam software.

There have been the odd instance where folk’s have received odd messages by private message etc.. when in doubt change your password and make sure it is a strong one.

I agree with the reference to the site’s direct contents, but some entities use these sites to find people who might be possible targets for additional investigation because of their background, and others simply to hack for commercial/criminal purposes. I get particularly suspicious of attempts from Chinese sources, as they have a very active information gathering network. I’m not paranoid, but anytime I see this activity, I tend to start changing passwords. Just a suggestion…

I doubt it has anything to do with the ‘nature’ of this site unless they are after making copies of WWII aircraft (not everyone frequents the Military Aviation forum)…

It will be more likely an attempt to bypass the registration system and gain control of an account or accounts to use for spamming members by way of the PM system due to the anti-spam measures in place for new registrations…

Seemples really…

And this was first noted here –
http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?133833-Log-in-attempt-NOT-ME

You’re right PD, a friend of ours has had attempts too, best to stick to the subjects in hand and keep any personal stuff that is potentially useful to them out of the way – after the way China ripped off a Merc 4×4 some years ago and got away with it in their ‘courts’ and then built their own YF-22 derivative (badly) from reputedly stolen plans, its clear that they have copying in their national psyche – the latest offended is Jaguar, who have seen their Evoque jeep ripped off @ around £20k less – shields up everyone.

Just for member’s awareness, I have been notified twice in the last few weeks of hacking attempts against my account. The first attempt was described simply as coming from Australia (?), while the second IP address specifically traced to a source in China. Clearly, discussions of military aviation and past military association may be of interest to various nefarious sources, so I suggest members may want to watch for more of this type of activity, and possibly change passwords as a precaution if concerned.

Edit: Sorry, I just noticed that PeeDee reported a similar incident on his account several days ago. Obviously, someone is interested in the background of people on this site. It might be a good time for all to consider changing to a stronger password if appropriate.

Hi all, not been on the forum for about 4 years and got an Email from the admin. saying somebody has tried logging in my ID, 5 times and they have been blocked for 15 minutes.
Just be aware folks. I don’t put too much personal detail on the net if I can help it, it’s just one method of how ID theft is done.
And I changed password.

Probably because they want to do something bad disguised as a genuine user.

well there is nothing we can do to stop them from trying .. i just dont know why they try when you can just create a free account and contribute to the forums… 🙂

Dear crow11, Yesterday the guy’s at KP emailed me too, as someone from China was trying to access my account as well,again they provided me with their IP address 117.169.1.177.