password security

Hello every body, I am here to know somethign about password security. Infact, Here i know one person thru chatting. He likes to call him self as a hacker, and he is ( I think so ). Even We know each othet thru chatting only and neither we are using the same computer nor we are on the same network. but still he has hacked my web mail(hotmail, yahoo) password many times. I dont know how he do it. but one day when i asked him that how he do all that he said to me that he uses brute force hakcing. he connects himself with hotmail server and then try to guess the password. I can't belive him. Because I am using very strong password and that is too much difficult to guess. I want to know that is he true? some body can hack password with this way? But as far as, i know it comes under illigal job then why he never been arrested for this? And how I can make my self secure from him..Plzzzzzzzzzzzz Help me i Have gone fed up with him. What i can do to make my self secure from him. Thanks in advance!

He's probably a kiddie who's owned your machine via a trojan or some weakness in the OS, and has installed a keylogger

I'd just check your machine very thoroughly for mal-ware (bear in mind that virus checkers cannot *generally* detect things which are not viruses), and remove it all, or reformat

Slarty

N.B. Mods: please move this thread into a more appropriate forum.

Reformat... make new hotmail/yahoo inbox and keep your passwords long, alpha-numeric, and filled with special characters (£,ƒ,æ,ÿ, etc.). If I were you, I'd email your current e-mail provider and tell them what is going on. For PC safety... keep an up-to-date AV program and a firewall that is set correctly.

= Cheers, jag291 =

if this is true...

http://www.kfki.hu/~arthp/art/t/tiep.../trojan_ho.jpg

Also remember that if you change your password, do you still have something simple as your secret question? I see way to oftenly, people using strong cryptic passwords, and then having a secret question such as, My name is. . . , with an answer of Jon. So make sure when you make a secure cryptic password, make a secure cryptic answer as well.

It does sound like this guys has a keylogger installed on your system. Have you ran anything that came to you from email, or from someone you don't know too well. Maybe the keylogger he used is on a public computer system, like at the library, school or work. Make sure your anti-virus is up to date and reset your passwords. You can also report abuse to Hotmail and Yahoo, they will be able to check the ip address of the last computer to log into that account.



--PuRe

perhaps this "hacker"(SK) really is using a brute force attack. As The3ntropy said, you should also have a difficult, more "secret" secret question, but if this script kiddie (SK) that's trying to impress you really is using a brute force attack, then even if you have all kinds of scanners and firewalls (which is an excellent idea), then he'll still be able to gain access to your email. In this case, the only way to make it stop is to report him/her and make a *good* password. You mentioned that you keep in touch with this person over the internet, so if you have his email address, or maybe his ISP, then you should contact them with the information you have about this person and let them know what's going on. I'd like to elaborate on what jaguar291 wrote. Brute force attacks can be set to only look for certain characters and many times when someone runs a BF attack they don't worry about the less used symbols so... a good password contains CAPITOL and lowercase letters as well as numbers, simple symbols like ?.,;_@! and less used symbols like *^%# and it should be at *least* 6 characters long. This makes for an excellent password that could take a *long* time to crack (SK's usually get discouraged if it can't be cracked after a day). I should mention: have you spoken with this person expressing that you are sick of his disregard of your privacy? It might work :)

try to do same to him..:) just kidding. never ever give your email address to anyone again unless ofcourse, you know that that person is worth your trust.

i have a friend whose can help you vaibhav22 he founds a program in which wou put a e-mail and it inmediateli give the pasword code................ you can give me the e-mail of the hacker and i give you his/her pasword code

I find it extremely difficult to believe that he has brute forced your password at all - let alone more than once on hotmail AND Yahoo. Two separate companies with decent security

Both are very secure, sure vulnerabilities pop up and he may know one but on both systems?? But I have not seen any serious known homail or yahoo vulnerabilites for a while. Hotmail is very secure, unless you are using a password like Bob or Kitty and he knows your name is Bob and your cats name is Kitty. All and all he is a a SK that is Full of BS. I am guessing you downloaded a "joke" from him or something. Or maybe responded to a "This is the hotmail/yahoo admin department. Send us your user name and password immediatly, or your account will be locked out." Or some other variation that I amazingly still see.

Get your windows disks and clean the computer by formating the hard drive and reinstalling it. You could get a virus scanner and try and clean your pc but most trojans are hard to remove, it's easier from this point to A:\format C: then reload windows.

If there is no trojan detected from a virus scan (the obvious possibility), there also could be a chance that this user is in a position to sniff network traffic from your host. Are you on any kind of shared network segment, such as a cable modem? If so, it is a definate possibility. Many times, authentication to sites such as hotmail and yahoo, is not encrypted via SSL by default. Usually there is a link to a secure login page. If I were you, I would make sure of that for starters, assuming of course, there is no trojan installed on your system as others have stated.

That is a good point, he may be on the same ISP segment. Besides making sure the login screen is secure, there is an option check box on hotmail for "Public Computer" That tightens things down a bit more. Always check that, even at home.

Hi,,

if he uses brute forcing then use a 29 letter long password which should be easy 4 u to
remeber like "mypasswordis29letterlong012345"

if he has installed trojan either format ur PC or use a trojan removal toool from



You can get TDS from http://tds.diamondcs.com.au/
or
You can get LockDown2000 from http://www.lockdown2000.com


let me know if he takes ur password next time

bye,
1&0


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