*ren* PSN Down, Customer Info Compromised

[Shifty Geezer]

You are right, I never realized it was this easy. From now on when I do anything I shall do it right the first time!

I didn't say it was easy! Didn't even say it was possible (although theoretically it is, if you take as long as needed to design a system and think through every possibility (which could require spending long enough for your system to become obsolete before its released)). It's the only way to avoid legacy issues though.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I guess what i am saying is, i would give it a real good "search" just to be sure, since something/someone really got to you. And that really sux

AFAIK most card fraud comes from people using their cards in stores or over the phone. If Joker only uses his card online then yeah, he's got issues. Otherwise it could have happened from a dodgy card scanner or an unscrupulous callcentre operator. Narrowing down where a breech occured isn't really possible on a well used card.

 

[joker454]

Reason i asked is that i sometimes in my job comes across "clean pc´s" that turn out not to be clean at all.
You don´t have to go any torrent, porn or other usefull stuff. It´s often the popular sites that are targetted for example game sites. mmo-champion has been the target a few times and plenty got their wow accounts hacked because of that

I guess what i am saying is, i would give it a real good "search" just to be sure, since something/someone really got to you. And that really sux

They all have Microsoft Forefront on them and they are all clean. Both my wife and I work from home running various businesses so they have to be clean Just from personal experience with others, it seems like 99.9% of the time when peope get a virus it's because they are dealing with torrents or torrent type websites, hence why I mentioned that.

AFAIK most card fraud comes from people using their cards in stores or over the phone. If Joker only uses his card online then yeah, he's got issues. Otherwise it could have happened from a dodgy card scanner or an unscrupulous callcentre operator. Narrowing down where a breech occured isn't really possible on a well used card.

My card is used frequently everywhere so who knows really. No biggie in the end, it's the third time this has happened to me since 1998 but we're well protected here so they just overnighted me a new card, eliminated the bad charges and off I go.

 

[patsu]

Joker, not just torrent sites anymore. Websites serving dubious ads are also spreading malware. USB key and free, helpful software are also "good" sources. PDF files too.

 

[joker454]

I guess we've been lucky then, viruses have never been an issue for us on all our pc's at home.

 

[patsu]

Besides antivirus's tend to be nearly useless anymore to prevent the malware from getting on your computer. It's all about the malware now. So many machines I've seen terribly infected and the antivirus just keeps going on about it's business like nothing every happened.

Heh heh, a girl in the library asked me to fix her laptop. When she saw my giant laptop, she figured I must be a computer guy. She had either Symantec or McAfee, plus other free AV and anti-malware tools her friends recommended. None of them could remove the nefarious ones. Spent 3 hours and essentially recommended her to reformat her laptop.

Some of the weird problems require obscure, specialized remover which I have never heard of. I couldn't tell if the removers are clean and authentic either.

 

[Xenus]

I work in IT presently though I'm graduated as a coder monkey. So I removed a lot of this stuff. But yeah even the simplest ones tend to take 2-3 hours to remove and some of the worst are the simplest viruses. Aka there is one going around now that hides all your files and deletes all your shortcuts. It's better to wipe and reload then rebuild all that after you get the data off it. There is also another one that blocks all things that it considers a threat. A renamed tdsskiller is the only thing I've run across that can kill it and it's gone in 5 mins but all the programs it fubared need reinstalled as permanently fubars their permissions. We use super anti-spyware, tdsskiller, and malwarebytes and that can clean 95% of the issues. Whether it's worth trying to fix after it's clean is another matter.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Going OT now.

 

[patsu]

Yeah but I think people should be aware that console and console network compromise are not the only way in for the hackers. As long as you use the (unique) password over the web, 'specially in a public place, it's possible to be hijacked.

PC AV wares may not be bullet proof either. These days I use VM and go back to a clean image every now and then.

 

[Phil]

Yeah I haven't had a virus in years. Basically I don't pirate software or go to torrent sites, hence viruses have never been an issue for me. Same with all the machines in our house, all clean for ages now.

Unfortunately, it doesn't take torrent or pirate software sites to get viruses anymore. Now days, malware is easily spread through infecting regular websites. Basically, any website could be infecting your PC.

EDIT: Just saw that patsu beat me to it. But I'd still add that *any* website now days could be spreading malware without the owners knowlege.

 

[AzBat]

Good thing I'm all Linux now.

Tommy McClain

 

[JB9861]

Unfortunately, it doesn't take torrent or pirate software sites to get viruses anymore. Now days, malware is easily spread through infecting regular websites. Basically, any website could be infecting your PC.

EDIT: Just saw that patsu beat me to it. But I'd still add that *any* website now days could be spreading malware without the owners knowlege.

Yep I was on xda developer's site checking out bootanimations and themes for my phone. Left for about 20 mins. Came back and a program called AV guard online was on my desktop. Luckily I have a laptop otherwise I couldn't have researched the program since it was quite nasty at disabling things. And removal in safe mode wasn't possible. Gotta stay virtual nowadays.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Valve have just had the same happen:

According to the company, intruders obtained access to a Steam database in addition to the forums. The database contained information including user names, hashed and salted passwords, game purchases, email addresses, billing addresses and encrypted credit card information.
Valve boss Gabe Newell said in a statement: “We do not have evidence that encrypted credit card numbers or personally identifying information were taken by the intruders, or that the protection on credit card numbers or passwords was cracked. We are still investigating… Nonetheless you should watch your credit card activity and statements closely.

 

[Arwin]

Yeah, so much for the (also my) idea that Sony would have been better off outsourcing this stuff to Steam in that respect. Though I'm willing to bet playing games or buying stuff on Steam won't be affected nearly as long, or even at all, so in that sense ... .

 

[patsu]

Yeah... like some of us said before, network hack is quite common. People try every day.

Xbox Live is suffering from the FIFA hack after more than a month now ? I still see the XBL FIFA hack thread bob up and down in GAF.

 

[Gitaroo]

can someone explain how the xbl hack thing happen, does it only happen to ppl with FIFA? What about other platforms?

 

[patsu]

Nope, from what I read, it can happen to people who don't play the game too.

Haven't heard of similar exploit on PSN yet. Then again, when the hackers are done with XBL, they may swing by for a friendly visit.

 

[AzBat]

Microsoft has stated it's not technically a hack, but instead phishing.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-11-10-fifa-ultimate-team-xbl-account-hijacks-were-not-a-hack

Tommy McClain

 

[patsu]

If it's pure phishing, it should happen to all platforms, instead of just XBL users. Some of the victims mentioned that their XBL password is unique and they never release it to anyone else. I see eastmen from B3D is also affected.

 

[joker454]

If it's pure phishing, it should happen to all platforms, instead of just XBL users.

If it was an XBLive hack then it should have affected more than just Fifa users.