Email spam received addressed to my forum name from here

[lovestotravel]

So tonight I received a spam email, which was the following:

Subject: hey whats up lovestotravel
Message: "thsi worked for me you should try it too have no regrets later act today (coughPY LINK HERE) look around you and you'll see that you deserve better"


Now I am VERY curious how my username for here, which is different to every other forum was used to spam me


:shock:

 

[Mal]

There are a few possibilities. Here's one:

I notice you have the "email user" option available on your profile. If someone has previously used that (Or you have used the "email someone" function yourself to someone) and that other machine becomes infected with an email address slurping program, then it can be leaked that way.

Admin would have to comment on any others.

 

[one9]

I think that it was acknowledged some time ago that this board got hacked and the hacker(s) got a copy of the user registration info including email addresses. A lot of different free php based scripts including the forum software vBulletin that this forum uses had vulnerabilities in the past which hackers took advantage of. There are probably tens or hundreds of thousands of websites that got hacked like this in the past. Recently it is less common as security upgrades have become better from most common php scripts.

 

[admin]

I think that it was acknowledged some time ago that this board got hacked and the hacker(s) got a copy of the user registration info including email addresses. A lot of different free php based scripts including the forum software vBulletin that this forum uses had vulnerabilities in the past which hackers took advantage of. There are probably tens or hundreds of thousands of websites that got hacked like this in the past. Recently it is less common as security upgrades have become better from most common php scripts.

No, this board was NOT HACKED. Please see my earlier post http://www.australianfrequentflyer....ave-again-been-hacked-20884-3.html#post286250. For the record, vBulletin is not a "free php based script". Its purchased professional software. AFF runs the most current version of the software.

I am now going to permanently close this thread. Keeping it open only encourages hackers and can cause unnecessary concern and anxiety. If you suspect that there is a security problem, please PM me rather than putting up a post. We take security very seriously, and all such messages will take top priority and be responded to as soon as possible.