Email hijacked

[dank69]

Hey guys, my wife's yahoo mail was hijacked last night. Spam was sent to everyone in her address book. I am thinking it was because of her weak password (numbers only) but just wanted to confirm it with the experts.

She said she read somewhere that spammers can gain control of an email account without the password. I think this would only be possible with a keylogger/virus/etc., which I am 99% sure we don't have.

Does the fact that the spam went out when none of our computers were even powered on rule out the possibility of a virus causing this? Or am I just naive? Thanks in advance for any info.

 

[Matthiasa]

I know someone that has been having issues with that as well. Apparently its spreadable by email so there is something going on with it.

However searching with like malwarebytes and avast found nothing.

With that said anyone know a way to handle it, well assuming the change in password doesn't cause it to stop?

 

[tcsenter]

Hotmail seems to have had a rash of them lately. I know two persons who had their Hotmail account taken over in the past month, one of them is fairly computer/tech savvy, and her's was taken over twice.

 

[Shaotai]

There are scripts/malware on facebook/myspace that can also do that. It uses your cached credentials to hit your address book, but doesn't really take over your account. I'll get odd spam from friends, and I'm pretty sure it comes from facebook/myspace...

 

[E411]

All,

Keep in mind that the "From" address on email is just a text field.

I can write an email to you right now that comes from "obama@whitehouse.gov" or "bill@microsoft.com". Do you seriously think it was Bill Gate's account being compromised?


No. Spammers use fake return addresses all the time. That's how email is.

 

[chipy]

All,

Keep in mind that the "From" address on email is just a text field.

I can write an email to you right now that comes from "obama@whitehouse.gov" or "bill@microsoft.com". Do you seriously think it was Bill Gate's account being compromised?


No. Spammers use fake return addresses all the time. That's how email is.

yes, you have a point. but in the OP's case it seems like something got a hold of the account considering the spam email was sent to people on their contacts list.

i guess the exception would be if someone/thing/bot extracted the sender's email address from an old email floating around somewhere, as well as the recipients' email addresses, then crafted an email based on that using the technique you described. in which case, how would we know if that was the case or if their accounts were actually compromised? i guess one way to test it out is to change the password (someone above mentioned this) and see if the spam stops. please feel free to correct me if anything i've said is wrong.

 

[Matt1970]

That happened to my girlfriends Yahoo account. I had her change the password and it stopped.