WARNING Be Very Affraid

GOT2FISH · 11-17-2003, 09:35 PM

Saturday Morning my cell phone went off at 7:00 am It was Joe from Comcast Security Legal Department [that woke me up] He told me he had over 8,000 complaints about my computer putting out spams for Morgage companies and travel agents.I explained to him that I was a computer idiot and he said that didnt matter, the problem came from my port and it was my problem,Heres were it gets scary I have Norton anti virus and a firewall. I also use a sweeper. I had to take my unit off line dump the hard drive and reload all my programs I have only been to known sites and very rarly open anything with out first scannig it. Has any one else had this happen or is it just me?

Freakwater · 11-17-2003, 10:09 PM

Dood! That's bananas! I wonder if we will ever be able to police this crap. I surf at home on my roomy's laptop and popups are a constant battle. He has purchased software to control it and it's still a battle. Every 15 mins there is such a massive flurry of popups that you cannot close them fast enough. I'm may switch to dialup. No reason to pay $53/mo. for broadband if half my time is spend closing, scanning, and removing popups.

Your situation is pretty freaky, but not surprizing. I think the best fire wall is to have two separate computers.....one online, one offline.

Freak

Pyramid · 11-18-2003, 05:18 AM

Talk about bananas, I installed a firewall about 5 mos ago and I just pulled it up to look at it after reading your thread and it said "Firewall has blocked over a million intrusions so far" and just below that it says " Firewall has blocked 21 thousand intrusions that are considered high rated" Whatever that means.

FreakWater, I downloaded a trial of Stopzilla to block popups. So far it has stopped all of them.

Good luck guys.

WaterDog · 11-18-2003, 06:10 AM

I use zonealarm and it works great as well. It's also free. I see those messages too Chinookster. Crazy isn't it. [img]graemlins/eek13.gif[/img]

Pete · 11-18-2003, 06:23 AM

I've got my system connected through a router, which helps. But a simple thing anyone can do is use an e-mail program which allows you to restrict the size of e-mails that will download to your machine. I have mine set to 40K, which means I get a note saying the e-mail has not been downloaded and asking if I want to down load it. At that point I can say "no" and the problem goes away before it gets on my system.

BrokeItOff · 11-18-2003, 06:31 AM

You may have also been spoofed, meaning that someone had used your ip even though it came from somewhere else. I am surprised that Comcast even bothered, those complaints were probably autogenerated by SpamCop software which over reports a problem. Norton Internet Security (50$) works great, though Zone Alarm works well for a home system.

Have you kept your windows security patches up to date? There are security holes that allow access to an intruder with out you having to download a thing.

[ 11-18-2003, 07:50 AM: Message edited by: BrokeItOff ]

lost_sailor · 11-18-2003, 07:07 AM

If you are running Windows, you must regularly visit
windowsupdate.microsoft.com

and install all the fixes to all the problems.

every couple weeks or so ...

Gus Orviston · 11-18-2003, 07:56 AM

Your email has been spoofed, nothing you can do about it. As brokeitoff says, spoofing is when you IP is hijacked. Mail is broadly sent from another location, and you IP is inserted. All responses come back to you, including complaints.

Like BIO said,, I am surprised Comcast even bothered. Often what you will have to do is get a new email account name/ip.

It has been done to me, but so far it isn't so bad that I need to change my email at work.

Mine was stolen when my out of the office reply was responding to Spam. Saying no he is OOO, but also saying you found a good address.

gus

TheTexan · 11-18-2003, 08:22 AM

What Gus said!

I have had the same thing happen to me with my work email. Do not turn on OOO! I will never use it again.

Conspiracy Theory · 11-20-2003, 02:19 AM

Here's a few more things to think about.

Did you contact Comcast with a phone # you have (not one he may have given you) to confirm this person really works there? If you called them did you ask if he is what he says he is and did you ask to be connected to him? Could have been a spam or joke on your phone. People are spamming phones now including cell phones.

If Comcast was really concerned they could've and probably would have turned off or disabled your account, not called you at 0700.

Quote:

It was Joe from Comcast Security Legal Department

<font size="2" face="verdana,arial,helvetica">Also Security and Legal are not normally associated with each other. They are normally 2 totally separate depts.

ampersat · 11-20-2003, 05:33 AM

Actually, this type of thing happens all the time. The ISP won't do anything about it aside from calling you. It's one of the plagues of our new internet society.

Think of it this way: would you park your car downtown with the windows down, the alarm off and the keys inside? Then you shouldn't do the equivalent of this by putting your PC on the 'net without protective measures in place.

Step 1: keep your PC fully patched. IE and Windows are full of holes just waiting to be exploited.
Step 2: get firewall software or a router with firewalling in place. The IP ranges of the high speed internet providers are well known in the hacker community and they run scanners on these ranges to find vulnerable computers. Once they find you, they'll hack in and your computer becomes their toy. Rolling out spam from a hacked computer is one of the common ways they abuse you.
Step 3: get McAfee (my favorite) or some kind of virus software and keep it up to date. Virus software is only as good as your virus definition files. Most have an autoupdate feature - use it. Most of the hacking type applications will be picked up by the AV software and deleted or contained.

Silver Hilton · 11-20-2003, 07:35 AM

Ampersat, if you have a hardware firewall with NAT in place, is it still easy for hackers to get access to your machine (through port scans and exploitation of holes, not through viruses)?

I have Win XP home on the kid's computer, XP Pro on mine, and Win 98 SE on my wife's.

I have a hardware router, and Black Ice running on two of the machines.

[ 11-20-2003, 08:36 AM: Message edited by: Silver Hilton ]

jokester · 11-20-2003, 07:39 AM

Quote:

I use zonealarm and it works great as well.It's also free.

<font size="2" face="verdana,arial,helvetica">Ditto that WaterDog and Chinookster! Crazy world out there! :shocked:

-jokester

[ 11-20-2003, 08:40 AM: Message edited by: jokester ]

Gus Orviston · 11-20-2003, 08:39 AM

Ampersat, that isn't going to solve getting spoofed. All the offending person(s) need is a valid IP and they just insert you in the router table as the sender. Then you get all the nasty grams back.

Your example is good but in the case of spoofing does nothing for you.

For example, if you get an email that says "blah blah,,,, to Unsubribe click here" If you click there you have just confirmed your IP and you can then be spoofed. There are many ways to get your IP...firewalls won't protect you from that.

gus