Oh they didn’t tell you this? might want to double check and make sure… may ever want to start changing passwords agn…
” If you’re a user of the social-media website Twitter, you may want to check your account status… Wired magazine reports that the service just discovered a “live hack.” Twitter shut down the hack “moments later.” But the attacker had already made off with the private data of 250,000 users. This includes usernames, e-mail addresses, and passwords. Twitter believes other companies are victims of the same attack. It’s a situation similar to the Subway restaurants’ credit-card hacking we noted only last week.
In recent days, the Washington Post and the New York Times newspapers have been hacked, too. Thieves stole the passwords of every single Times employee, then accessed 53 employees’ personal computers. The Times believes China-based hackers used a sophisticated “spear-phishing” attack to breach their safeguards.”
The report goes on to describe the problem…
“Spear-phishing attacks target individuals through their e-mail accounts. One click on an innocuous-looking e-mail downloads remote access tools (RATs) onto the victim’s computer. The attacker uses the RATs to steal passwords, documents, screenshots… and even eavesdrop through the computer’s microphone and webcam. It all goes on without the victim’s knowledge.
The Times believes the hack went on for four months. It employed antivirus software company Symantec for online security… but the hackers still installed 45 pieces of malware (malicious software) on their computer systems. Of that number, the Symantec systems identified and quarantined only one.”
Be double sure before you open any email… even some that come from people you know…
WD0AJG