• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

Forums have been hacked

T

TX_Dj

Experienced Member
Joined
Apr 5, 2013
Messages
229
Location
Sachse, TX
Yesterday I received an email from "Fred R. Mensah" claiming to be a "well to do Member of a major political party in Ghana" who wanted to "seek [my] permission to present to [me] [his] financial Proposal".

Why does this mean the forum was hacked? Because the email address I use for every account is uniquely traceable back to where I used it.

Either VCFed have sold their forum's member list (unlikely), or they've been hacked. I would recommend everyone change your passwords.
 
If the forums were hacked, my guess is that it happened some time ago while we were on the old software, and the username list was only just sold to this particular spammer recently. The way this kind of hack works, the hacker is able to sell the data on the black market (e.g. the "dark web") for a high price while the data is new (the buyers will be people hoping to, e.g., get into your bank accounts), but as the data ages its value goes down (at which point the buyers will be people like spammers).

I did not get an email like that so I'd guess the "hack" would have been between 2013 and 2017.
 
I would say the more likely cause is spammers using dynamically generated email lists, rather than the forum being hacked. It's not hard to write a script to mash together names and numbers to try and guess random email addresses and then blast out emails. Another method is compromising the credentials from one site and using those for another site since so many people use the same email across sites, or at least very similar ones, which can be guessed with scripts.

I have email addresses that I've never given out and still receive spam on them.
 
Those spam lists are sometimes amazing--I answered a phishing email back in 1998 using the name of the then-attorney general of Alaska. Every once in awhile, I'll still get an email addressed to him. SPAM it seems, can even outlast the canned meat product of the same name.
 
I didn't hit the panic button but I attempted to change my PW and that failed. The problem seems to be "email address" doesn't match. I didn't take it to task but may work on that today. Proly something silly that I just overlooked.

Late edit: I was able to change my password after twice entering my email address successfully. There was some sort of an anomaly with a pop-up that said the SSL certificate was not valid and a need for me to contact the administrators, but I just blew that off. I logged out and in okay.
 
Last edited:
I've gotten spam from "Fred R. Mensah" in the past but nothing recently. I remember the name because it reminded me of that group of self proclaimed geniuses.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top