Jared Harley describes how he was hacked in “Vulnerabilities in network security or How I got hacked“. Jared failed to secure his computer and the software he uses, which lead to an unwanted intruder in his system.
Jared uses software called VNC to access his computer when he’s not at home, which acted as an open doorway into his system. Jared left his computer and his VNC software unsecured, and ultimately fell victim to a hacker who broke in and used his computer to send out over two hundred thousand spam e-mails.
“Apparently someone was able to access my computer through my vnc connection (or they were sitting at the computer, which didn’t happen). They uninstalled my antivirus, copied the Dark Mailer software from the web onto the desktop, ran the program and loaded a huge text file of email addresses into the program to begin emailing. I caught and stopped the program after it had been running for almost 19 hours, sending 231,746 emails - that’s more than 3 emails a second!”
Jared sounds like a smart, technologically-inclined guy who simply fell victim to the “it can’t happen to me” syndrome. After finding out that his computer had been broken into, he took inventory of all the mistakes he made that allowed the criminal to gain access. Jared’s article about the entire ordeal describes what he learned from the incident, and what he did to make his computer more secure. The article is essential reading for anyone who wants to know how a computer can be hacked, and how such things can be prevented.
