Posted: 1/12/2008 8:59:26 PM EDT
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It seems my computer may have been hacked into ro it has some sort of hacker software on it. See this thread for the complete explanation: Paypal account hacked What it boils down to is that in the last two days my paypal account has been hacked into and the password and all its info changed. Then made several charges of 32 dollars and change on a few different cards. I have been working with paypal on it since then. They emailed me tonight and said they think that I may have some "infected software" that is allowing this to happen. I have installed and run adaware, and spybot, my mcafee says that everything is good and I am protected. What else short of taking it into a computer expert can I do to find out if my computer is infected? |
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There is a recent virus that installs itself into the MBR and launches a rootkit. If you have that you will need to get to a dos prompt and type fdisk /mbr Might be kind of difficult as that program isn't usually shipped with windows. Paypal has a spotty security record and I have seen accounts get compromised without explanation. -Foxxz |
Most likely you are good.... and your account was compromised elsewhere, or you are sharing passwords (using the same password at multiple sites) or your password is weak. |
Yup, good advice in here except the fdisk comment, heehee could have messed up his day with that!  Don't get me wrong that's how you wipe an MBR problem out, but I'm not sure Yankeefan was looking for that much work.Paypal accounts get hacked all the time. I'd use a dedicated and less used email address for it it possible, and change your password once in a while. (Make sure it's not just letters/words!) |
length is not the only consideration when creating a password... password length reaches a point of diminishing returns depending on the hashing algorithm used. for example, in older UNIX distros when encrypting the password it would only take the first 8 characters, everything after 8 wasn't used. using the DISA STIGs, the minimum password security is a 9 character password with at least 2 upper and 2 lower case letters, 2 numbers, 2 special characters (!@#$%^&*), and should not be easily guessable or use dictionary words. |