Atlantic Roleplay Community Boards

[Halister Marner]

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In regards to the ICQ hijackings...

One thing that may be happening is if one person has their ICQ hacked, a bot checks all the ICQ numbers on their list, and tries to brute force each ICQ number.

In short, everyone should make sure their ICQ password is secure. Your password should look like this preferably, to insure safety...

1cQp455W

Using capitals, numbers, and upper/lower case.
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"There are those who dream to escape reality, and there are those who dream to change it."

[Teh Glouris Lrod Kujabis]

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Don't use dictionary words anywhere in your password if they aern't split up by numbers. Like halister said, stitch numbers into the letters, make the word not a word at all; and if the program/service allows symbols in the passwords (!@#$%^&*(){}:"<>?,./;'[]=-\| and the such), throw at least one or two of them in there as well (though I do not believe ICQ has that support, but many websites do for email at least).

My other guess was a trojan that reads from wherever ICQ stores your password, since one of the recent cases was an autosaved, never typed password. If that is the case, get stronger security, or consider switching to a third party ICQ client like Trillian since the pass will be stored elsewhere and differently.

[Halister Marner]

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I've received a few more logs, and it's looking more and more like a brute force hacking, since there are no infections present on the machines, neither is there any indication of rootkits or any other stealth viruses.

Keep your passwords complicated and I think that will eliminate the problem.
_________________
"There are those who dream to escape reality, and there are those who dream to change it."