Hackers run wild and free on AOL

Hey All,

just another reason to shake your head at the ignorance of AOL :confused:

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Using a combination of trade tricks and clever programming, hackers have thoroughly compromised security at America Online, potentially exposing the personal information of AOL's 35 million users.

The most recent exploit, launched last week, gave a hacker full access to Merlin, AOL's latest customer database application. As a security measure, Merlin runs only on AOL's internal network, but savvy hackers have found a way to break in.
The hack involves tricking an AOL employee into accepting a file using Instant Messenger or uploading a Trojan horse to an AOL file library. When the file is executed, the Trojan horse connects the user who launched it to an Internet relay chat server, which the hacker can use to issue commands on the targeted machine. This allows the hacker to enter the internal AOL network and the Merlin application.

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It also states...

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These so-called social engineering tactics involve calling AOL customer support centers and simply asking to have a given user's password reset. Logging in with the new password gives the intruder full access to the account.

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Is AOL customer support really that dumb ??? aperently .. yes :confused:

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AOL did not return repeated calls requesting comment for this story.

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LOL i wonder why ?

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"You see all those commercials saying AOL 8.0 is so secure," said Dan. "If people knew how insecure their data was they probably wouldn't use it."

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EXACTLY !

anyways to read the full story for yourself and get a laugh or just shake your head at ignorence you can find it Here

Really funny story. I really dont understand why aol has so many customers in the first place. You hear it everywhere that aol is everything but secure, and that you have to many online restrictions. AOL offers many free hours of being online here in greece, but i have not found one person who actually uses it. I wonder why.

Cheers for that info drag0nsfyre.

yes i have received plenty of AOL coasters err CD's in the mail i think its a thoughtful gesture that they want to give me something to place my coffee cup on LOL :thumbsup: its about the only use i get out of them LOL :D

Another option is to mail the AOL Cd's to the person who runs this website ( http://www.nomoreaolcds.com/ ). He's trying to draw attention to how AOL harms the environment by producing so many CD's.
141,803 AOL Cd's collected as of this moment!! Hehehe :)

AOL should better train their ppl about SE but
it'll proably never happen. My wife wanted to switch to AOL last year cause her friends have it
but I told her why we shouldn't and we never did.

i dont use em as coasters, i put em on my wall, the shiny side of a CD is awesome, i got em set up on my ceiling and walls, if you point a laser at it you get a cool show and also there fun causei have glow in the dark starts glued to my ceiling fan blades so at night you see a distorted circular mirror image and a twirling circle in the night that glows.

I apoligize for a somewhat off topic reply, but I think I can address some of the earlier comments, at least for USA users.

I use AOL because I need the nationwide access (I also have an Earthlink account, because sometimes one or the other has no local number and I often stay in small towns for as much as two weeks.) If not for that, I would do away with both and use one of the local services for half the price (or less).

And yes, AOL customer support is sometimes dumb (err, "uninformed" is more politically correct I suppose). I have found myself having to explain how firewalls work or how various Windows operating systems deal with certain issues on occasion to their personnel so we can get past the canned answers. In fairness, I have also had some outstanding support from individuals -- just depends on whether you're lucky when you call them. As I think of it, I guess the same can be said for many telephone support experiences.

im a lucky one my ISP techies are actually really cool, and they are actually intelligent. so yea im like lucky, any time iv ever called iv never had a problem.

Ok I ask this, how is it people like Microsoft and AOL are having all these security issues? I mean they are like the "top" companies in their lines of products right? So how is it that they don't have enough money to keep enough security on their products/take time to make sure everything is secure? I think people are cutting costs to save more money to make the people at the board have bigger wallets. Which is stupid, if you have a crap load of money you should sit and look into this stuff.

Everyone has to admit, that AOL and their problem with hackers has been big news for awhile. Just a little bit ago a thread was posted talking about how AOL is a hackers paradise.

http://www.antionline.com/showthread...aol+AND+hacked

Plus someone being able to get into "personal information" sounds bad. They don't really let you know if it's credi card information, or address information, which someone could be selling. 35 million email addresses on the email black market would probably get a big reward. And no one has really ever been traced for somethign like that. Scary thought.