Was Yahoo Mail Hacked by Chinese Spammers Over the Weekend?

August 25, 2008 by
Filed under: IT News 

This morning, a colleague at work reported that someone had broken into his online Yahoo mail account over the weekend and sent a single spam email to all the people in his contact address book. The message advertised a website and asked people to buy the spammer’s goods.

He asked me to help work out how his account had been compromised.

The spam message remained in his sent box, so I examined the full headers. After doing a reverse lookup of the IP address, I found out that it was sent from a host located in China.

After doing a google search, I discovered that at least one other person had their account misused in the same way – as reported in this post on Yahoo answers dated 22nd August.

So far, I have not found any media coverage of any incident, so I am wondering how widespread this problem is. If you or anyone you know has had their Yahoo mail account misused in this way, please make a comment. Also, don’t forget to report this to Yahoo support.

Comments

One Comment on Was Yahoo Mail Hacked by Chinese Spammers Over the Weekend?

  1. marjjee on Thu, 21st May 2009 11:29 am
  2. I had the same Chinese website hack into my Yahoo account 3 months ago and again 3 weeks ago. Told Yahoo and they said to upgrade my antivirus. I did and was told my computer was clean. I also downloaded and scanned with Microsoft’s Malicious Software Removal Tool and after a 3 hour scan it also said I was clean. Last Monday, the 11th, I changed my password and told Yahoo that I thought that they had been hacked and what could we do. They never answered and on Friday, the 15th, they suspended my account without warning or explanation. When I tried to sign in and couldn’t I called, thinking it was something to do with my new password. They said I violated section 6 Member Conduct and that I was suspended. I tried to speak to someone else, tried to appeal that this was my biz acct and had been for the last 9 years and was stone walled. What can I do? I have over 300 emails addresses that I can no longer access as that was their only location and, until last Friday, I had no reason to think Yahoo would blame me for their data being hacked. Help!

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