Has Game Squad been hacked?

daniel zucker

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Does any one know who this email address belongs to?

asldkgonkqw@googlemail.com

I received a blank email message from this address with an attachment. My security program tells me that it is a Trojan horse.
I know not to open it, so lets not get into all of that.

daniel
 

Jazz

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Nobody that i know. Evidently somebody got your email from somewhere. These days the possible sources of that information are depressingly plentiful. I have not seen any other instances of this source of messages so at this point, any number of other sites are as much suspect as GameSquad. Need to see if more instances come up.

The forums has been a bit under siege from a spambot. I log in every AM and have to delete anywhere from 6 to 20 spambot posts from users that signed up within 24 hours. That being said, these guys could not get to your or anybody else's email from the forum.
 

jrv

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Is there any reason you suspect your e-mail was obtained from gamesquad, aside from the from address beginning with "asl"? If that is all, it's probably just a coincidence.

JR
 

daniel zucker

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Is there any reason you suspect your e-mail was obtained from gamesquad, aside from the from address beginning with "asl"? If that is all, it's probably just a coincidence.

JR
You are probably right in its just a coincidence, given what Jazz said. I only use the the asl email address for ordering stuff form MMP and TTP's and talking with all of yous guys at game squad. Might be some one else got hacked, or a spam bot.
Thanks Jazz & jrv
 

volgaG68

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The forums has been a bit under siege from a spambot. I log in every AM and have to delete anywhere from 6 to 20 spambot posts from users that signed up within 24 hours.
This explains just what I had been wondering about. In the middle of the night at work, I'll check in here on break. Rather than all the log-in/surfing nonsense on my not-so-smart dino-phone, with only 15 minutes at my disposal, I just tap Recent Posts. Up until a month or so ago (?), I would get the straight, ASL-skinny. Seems the last month maybe, only 2 or 3 of the first twenty are ASL-related; the rest are all obvious diet supplement spam and assorted nonsense. Not the end of the world, but frustrating to have to read through all of those reply headers before spotting something actually ASL-related.
 

jrv

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It might be a good idea to disable the hotlink so it can not be activated from the forum.
All it should do is bring up your mail client software with the "to address" filled in. You still have to click "send" for it to go anywhere. It might confuse you, but it's not especially dangerous, not like a link to a web site.

JR
 

Bob Walters

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All it should do is bring up your mail client software with the "to address" filled in. You still have to click "send" for it to go anywhere. It might confuse you, but it's not especially dangerous, not like a link to a web site.

JR
True, but having worked in data recovery for awhile once upon a time has made me very cautious. In addition, from some of the comments I have seen in the various threads, we have a significant number of people who are not particularly computer savvy.
 

Jazz

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It might be a good idea to disable the hotlink so it can not be activated from the forum.
Any post with a link in it (with the possible exception of The Emporium....forum policy is still being discussed) gets taken off the forum and is not visible to rank & file as soon as one of us gets to it.
 

clubby

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Yeah, but that's not a link to anything. That's an email address. It's no more "dangerous" than any other email address.
 

rwpikul

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You are probably right in its just a coincidence, given what Jazz said. I only use the the asl email address for ordering stuff form MMP and TTP's and talking with all of yous guys at game squad. Might be some one else got hacked, or a spam bot.
Thanks Jazz & jrv
Not only is the "asl" at the start of the address probably nothing more than a fluke, the address in the From: header is meaningless anyway. It's trivial to set it to anything one might want, (in fact, the only headers you know you can trust are the Received: headers as far back as they give you a coherent route).

As for getting the address, if the username in your address is either short or used by just about anyone, anywhere it could be publicly seen: It could easily be simply a wardialing spam run that sends mail to a long list of addresses at significant ISPs and email services.
 

jrv

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If you have multiple e-mail addresses (as Daniel apparently does), you can give out each address to only one (or a few, but one is better) site. Then when you start receiving dangerous spam to that e-mail you know the site has been hacked¹. When linkedin was hacked I started receiving e-mail on the address I gave to them. In that case the hack was widely publicized so it was no surprise. I have had a few other accounts compromised that were not widely publicized. So far I have had no strange e-mail to my gamesquad e-mail account.

JR

¹ Or possibly your machine has been if you have a record of all your accounts on your machine, but in that case you should get dangerous spam to many of your e-mail addresses. It might also be the case that the site has sold/shared your e-mail with some third party that has been hacked, but the original site shares the blame as far as I am concerned. There is also some slight possibility that some intermediate that handles your e-mail has been compromised.
 
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rwpikul

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If you have multiple e-mail addresses (as Daniel apparently does), you can give out each address to only one (or a few, but one is better) site. Then when you start receiving dangerous spam to that e-mail you know the site has been hacked¹.
That only works if the username is unique and long. Some spammers will try to brute force things by trying all short usernames and any username that someone has used anywhere they can find. They will take an address like "someoddname@example.edu" and try sending mail not only there but also to "someoddname@example.com", "someoddname@example.net", "someoddname@example.org", etc. Sure, the vast majority of the emails are going to bounce but it's not like the spammer is paying for the electricity or net connection.
 

daniel zucker

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I use asl at d zucker for this sight and to order asl from MMP ect ect and when I talk to guys on this forum so I know it has to do with asl. My security program told me the attachment from that address was a Trojan horse, so I'm thinking that its a hacker trying to get into my machine using the brute force that repikul talks about.

I'm on the front line hear fighting spam
 

jrv

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I use asl at d zucker for this sight and to order asl from MMP ect ect and when I talk to guys on this forum so I know it has to do with asl. My security program told me the attachment from that address was a Trojan horse, so I'm thinking that its a hacker trying to get into my machine using the brute force that repikul talks about.

I'm on the front line hear fighting spam
If you use the same address to contact other people directly, i.e. not through the forum, then one of those people could have been hacked. When a user is hacked one of the more common things that happens is that the malicious program sends exploits to the entire address book of the victim. You can only be (somewhat) sure of how you were hacked if you limit the e-mail to one endpoint. That is easy to do when communicating with commercial sites and the like, but tricky to do within your circle of friends.

JR
 

Robin Reeve

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I have a specific email adress to interact with this forum - I never log on it nor, of course, read what lands in its postbox.
I have it forward any notification* on a more frequently used adress.
I never have had any spam coming from that special asl forum adress.

*I toggled off the post notifications, so I only receive pm notifications. As a side remark, not having notifications about threads and posts really makes my life easier : when there is a flamewar or otherwise heated debate, the absence of notifications avoids the temptation to answer too quickly or going on interacting in a sterile discussion.
 
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