Computer Intrusion

I sold my laptop computer last Oct. The other night on one of my business computers an intrusion alert popped up by Norton that someone was trying to intrude into the computer.

Another alert popped up on the other computer about five minutes later. The name Norton shows for the Intruder is the name of my old laptop.

Last night Norton blocked the message 'filetransfer.msg.yahoo.com/notifyft'. The name of the computer is my old laptop that was sold to this person.

Is this person trying to gain access to my business computers, and are they trying to transfer files?

Thanks

At first glance, it sounds like you sold a laptop to someone without cleaning out your personal information (and your yahoo account username and PW were proably stored on there as well).

You should change your Yahoo password immediately.

It looks to me like that person recovered your yahoo username and pw and they were possibly doing a file transfer while you were online with that same username and pw. Yahoo got confused as to where to send the file to with two users on at the same time. Yahoo should not allow one account to be logged on at the same time from two different computers, but that might be what has happened.

I doubt you can contact the person who bought your laptop and ask them what they may be doing, but it can't hurt.

Also, before you sell any computers, please wipe them clean. If you are not sure, your local computer company or IT persons at your computer should do a full wipe and OS install.

Good luck and keep us posted.

~Halv

I don't know, I feel you are missing something here.

I never knew that Norton is giving you the name of the computer that is trying to {Supposedly} to break into your system!!!! Am I missing somethin', or just lack of experience?

In case of intrusion attempt, the only thing that would help him/her to do so, is desktop remot applications .. or even some sensitive data that can be used to gain access to the network or other computers ... Data like IPs, subnet masks info, or even secuirty policies .... Rarely people do this .... this is an extremely hazardous practice .....

N.B: Norton do alert an intrusion attempt is unnecessary cockies are being planted .. this might justify your case, I'm not so sure ...

Cheers

As mentioned I did not clean out the personal info, my error. I just changed all the passwords after reading your reply.

Thanks for your help


The name did show up as the Intruder, how I don't know. I'm not that familiar with what is going on here.

monashee

For future reference it is a BAD very BAD BAD BAD BAD idea to ever give anything of yours away without clearing it out.... especially a computer.... My recommendation:

If you know the person at the very least go through and clear all temp file and blah blah... if you can (I recommend strongly) that you wipe it clean and since it was your mistake offer to reload the OS for them...

That said it's not just your yahoo and email accounts I would be worried about so much as the process of what you should take a look at:

Have you ever done online banking, credit card bill viewing, or any financial data viewing on that laptop?

if so Change all those passwords, if those sites have secret questions to recover your password change those as well.

You said he is accessing (or attempting) to access your work network?

If you aren't the computer admin (just going out on a limb here) inform your IT staff so they can change your password or change it yourself but make sure they know to keep an eye out for whatever you computer name is. If you had VPN setup there I would recommend changing any of that data as well.

Anything that you have that has a password needs to be changed, anything that you have that is connected to monetary funding needs to be closley watched and passwords need to be reset up. Email accounts, Instant Message accounts, you name it you need to go through and change the passwords and secret questions, I may even go to the extreme of changing the PIN #'s on any of your Debit/Credit cards

Just my 2 Cents and I hope you learned your lesson this time around.

next time look for a program that can do multiple low level passes and perhaps rewrite 1's and 0's to the drive..