Feb-09-2012, Thursday: A hacker sent an email with subjectline "Re2:" from id "malay anand <gakse_2000@yahoo.com>" to hundreds of people subscribing to a Google group. The email body had nothing but a line "How is it going?" and then a web link which was directing to an online marketing website. After clicking that link, the person (i.e. email id of the person) was immediately unsubscribed from the Google group and then user was directed to the marketing website. Then a confirmation email with subject line "Your unsubscrip
Fig: Body of hacker's email
The unsafe link embedded in the email was hosted by a French server, "spectaclederue.fr". Unfortunately McAfee SiteAdvisor mentions that this domain does not have any problem. They have tested the website!!
Post this incident, the moderators of the Google group had a time of distress. People across world who were members of the group started calling them early in the morning as they were auto-unsubscribed without requesting for the same. Corrective measures were taken immediately and the principal moderator sent an assurance message to all members saying the Google group is safe at around 11:45 AM IST.
This kind of heinous cyber crimes are not new. Hackers always find a loop hole and try to penetrate to a system to which they are not authorized. Very recently news is floating around - source code of Norton anti-virus has been partially hacked.
Learnings:
1 - Change your online account passwords regularly, at least once in 2 months
2 - The password you choose should be very complex: it should have (a) at least 8 characters, (b) one or more uppercase letter, (c) letters, special characters and numerals
3 - Do not ever click links attached to emails sent from unknown ids.
Note: The name of the Google group is intentionally avoided. It is a language learning group.
