have-changed-title

[spunkarooney]

I use a unique email address for every website I subscribe to. This morning I received the following email, sent to the address used exclusively for Australian Frequent Flyer, this website.

-----Original Message-----
From:EDITED
Sent: Friday, 23 May 2008 02:40
To: [ADDRESS REDACTED]
Subject: EDITED

You guys got hacked by EDITED

thanks Rose
-----End Message-----

So, it does indeed appear that this site has been hacked. Any personal data you have supplied as part of the registration process, I suspect, is now at risk.

Would anyone official like to comment on this?

 

[admin]

Edited

I've just sent you a PM.

Our engineers are investigating whether our site security has been breeched.

Will advise of the outcome of the investigation.

I use a unique email address for every website I subscribe to. This morning I received the following email, sent to the address used exclusively for Australian Frequent Flyer, this website.

-----Original Message-----
From: EDITED
Sent: Friday, 23 May 2008 02:40
To: [ADDRESS REDACTED]
Subject: EDITED

You guys got hacked by EDITED

thanks Rose
-----End Message-----

So, it does indeed appear that this site has been hacked. Any personal data you have supplied as part of the registration process, I suspect, is now at risk.

Would anyone official like to comment on this?

 

[lovetravellingoz]

Just to provide other feedback..

I received no such email.

 

[diana]

I also received this email this morning but I just deleted it without reading the message as I did not know the sender.
I recognised this address as soon as I saw your message. Actually I thought it a strange one.

 

[Evan]

No email to me...

But slightly O/T, my work email has been getting spam recently (2 or 3 weeks) and i never use it for anything but work, so did a friend. We suspect that somebodys machine must have been compromised but have no idea who or how.

I am sure these guys are getting smarter... Maybe not directly hacking anything but puting suspect SMTP relays into use or something like that, i have no read idea. (Been out of that scene a little while now, doing more inside system security rather than network/internet security)

E

 

[spunkarooney]

Well, if you had read my initial post, you would see that the email message received by me was sent to an email address used ONLY for this site. That is to say, the email address I have provided to AFF was known only to it and to me.

Furthermore, I checked the IP address of the email and found that it was sent from an AFF server which further confirms that it was AFF which was hacked. That is, the email message was not sent by a compromised PC, rather, a compromised AFF database was used to initiate the send from within.

Why the message was received by only some subscribers can only be answered by the hacker and/or site administrators.

 

[oz_mark]

I did not think I had received this email, but have just found that it got sent into the junk folder.

 

[ksthommo]

Received the same email:?:

 

[admin]

We have spent most of the day investigating. This is the analysis so far:

1. We are running the most recent version of vBulletin (version 3.7). We have been in touch with the vendor and have been assured that there are "no security flaws"

2. Our software engineers have assured me that the server is "fully secured"

That said, spunkarooney did forward a copy of that email to me, and on the surface the email did seem to originate from our servers. So there could potentially have been a security breech. We have since changed all access and database passwords and added additional security levels.

If there is a risk, it will be that the information members have on our system will be compromised. We deliberately don't store financial information (we use Paypal for that), but do store your email address. So I guess, the worst case secenario is that you will receive spam email.

Please be assured that we will continue to investigate and do what ever we can to ensure our databases remain secure.

 

[admin]

I have just gone through the thread and deleted the alleged hackers details. If there was a hacker, I don't want to encourage him (or her) by promoting his details.

For the same reason, I am also going to lock this thread.