Hacking My E-mail

SOMEONE HAS SENT A PERSONAL E-MAIL TO ONE OF MY MUSIC STUDENTS FROM MY COMPUTER BUT WAS NOT PRESENT IN MY HOME.IT WAS IN MY SENT BOX, AND WAS MARKED WITH A TIME THAT MY COMPUTER WAS OFF LINE. I'M USING A MODEM. NOW I'M NOT CONCERNED WITH THE TIME BECAUSE FOR SOME REASON MY COMPUTER HAS BEEN GIVING ME WRONG TIMES BACK ON MY SENT MAIL SOMETIMES. I WANT TO KNOW HOW TO FIND OUT WHO IS HACKING INTO MY COMPUTER! I HAVE WINDOWS FIREWALL AND AVAST ANTI VIRUS BUT THEY ARE GETTING THROUGH THAT. I JUST WANT TO KNOW AN INEXPENSIVE WAY TO FIND OUT. THANKS! - JJ

TIP

Lay off the caps :D

What mail system are you using...???

Is this your home machine...or a work machine???

MLF

Let me summarize.
There is now in your "Sent Items" folder in ... Outlook? an email which you did not send.
What is the content of the email?
Show us the headers.
It sounds like someone in your house did that; a cracker would not do something as silly as that; they would get your information and email from somewhere else.

For all we know, YOU sent an obscene email to a student because she gave you a boner and now you're looking for ways to cover your ass.. We need more information.

It may have been sent when you thought your computer was off-line. Where you actually present in the same room as your computer when it was sent?

Anyone could have logged on your box and sent it. Check your logs and see if it was booted up.

If your not sure how to check them, post what OS you have and im sure someone will tell you!

WELCOME TO AO BTW!!!



/Why did someone neg him? Its his first post, aint going to encourage him to stay around if he gets negged straight away!! Poor Guy!!

It may be as simple as it being a hotmail type account and he doesn't understand how it works and some one just logged into the account from another location via the web. Sounds far fetched I suppose. But so does asking a user to send me a copy of a floppy they have and receiving a xerox copy of the floppy in the mail several days later.

The firewall that comes with XP is not sufficient enough, get another firewall...

Well, at least he wasnt asking how to hack hotmail ffs. lol Definitely get another firewall tho. Take a look at http://www.zonelabs.com/store/conten...=dbtopnav_zass . That is the direct link to the free download of zone alarm. One last thing, the email was sent directly from your console it sounds like, check your room mates/ family and friends who come over. Suspect everyone!

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The firewall that comes with XP is not sufficient enough, get another firewall

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That is an ignorant comment.

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Definitely get another firewall tho. Take a look at ... That is the direct link to the free download of zone alarm.

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You're joking right? You must be.

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I'M NOT CONCERNED WITH THE TIME BECAUSE FOR SOME REASON MY COMPUTER HAS BEEN GIVING ME WRONG TIMES BACK ON MY SENT MAIL SOMETIMES.

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This seems odd to me, it only gives a wrong time sometimes? How wrong is the time? Since it isn't consistantly incorrect does it vary when you power-cycle your computer? Are other activities present in your event logs for the time that email says it was sent AND the time you calculated the email was sent by accounting for the error in time (if possible)?

It is also possible that your mail client crashed with items in the outbox which were not sent until sometime later... such an application crash should also be present in your event logs, though this crash could have occured at anytime between the last legitimate use and the actual sending of the mail.

Without understanding the nature of the email's content it is difficult to establish a source. My immediate guesses are, in order of probability:

[list=1][*]You were drinking a bit too much and forgot sending the email.[*]Someone physically sat at your computer and sent the email.[*]Your email client was effected by a trojan horse, which prolly arrived via email.[*]An all-star team of ex-Soviet cyber-soliders hacked their way through your firewall and sent the letter, which actually contains a KGB activation code. Your music student has since had all their training, which up until now has been locked up in their subconscious brought to the forefront of their brain and it wouldn't surprise me if they tried to kill you. If I was you, I'd kill them first before they get the chance.[/list=1]
cheers,

catch

Would it scare you if I told you I found away to totally kill a sygate process with a simple request? The same overload can be done with zonealarm, they're pieces of crap.

Emails can easily be forged....

.IT WAS IN MY SENT BOX
my bad....I should read more carefully.

This sounds as if he's using webmail, not Outlook (Express). With webmail you would not need access to a computer just to send emails... And of course with webmail you can protect your own computer with dozens of antivirus stuff, get install several firewalls, Fill your system with antispyware tools and ad-removers and still your webmail would be vulnerable since it's NOT located on your own system. So no matter if his computer was on or off, with webmail it doesn't matter.

Best way is:

Run some anti-spyware as t.ex. spybotSD and Ad-Aware,to remove key-loggers, then
So far as you have access to you e-mail acount-->> change login password to you e-mail