Spamming and Hacking Made Easy...by the Mistakes We Make
Posted: Friday, April 25, 2008
by Harlan Foster
Very Good Company
Did you ever wonder how your computer can become a depository for so much garbage, like advertisements for everything under the sun? I recently sent something cute to my brother and several others that came to me from someone who had sent the item to several people listed in the "to" field of an email. My brother, a professional programmer for more than thirty years, responded to me by chewing me out' for including him in the "to" field. I was surprised by his response, so I wrote back and asked the old boy why his nasty response. He provided me with the following explanation; something entirely new to me. I'm hoping that others will read this and learn as I have that we can make the computers of our friends and family vulnerable by repeating these mass mailings. Perhaps if we can share this information with others, we can do something positive to cut down the access the spammers and hackers have to our computers.
This can be done with an automatic program designed to ping 1 a set of IP 2 addresses in a given range, like numbers one to ten thousand. Then when the hacker gets a hit (a response), the hacker will enter the computer and read the files on that computer by breaching the security (if there is any) of the operating system. This has been something easy to do in the past with Windows. Microsoft has been creating security patches to stop the problem of hackers. A user simply downloads the patch (a file containing information the computer uses to "plug a hole" in the program) and it is automatically applied (to the program).
In the case of email spamming, the spammer/hacker reads the files that are stored on the user's computer, more specifically, the email files. Addresses in the TO field are readily available for the hacker to read. Email addresses that are contained in the BCC field (Blind Copy) are not readable.
By using an email robot, these addresses are not only copied to the spammer-hacker, they are used to distribute spyware, spam and viruses to the computer being hacked, as well as to all of the email addresses that are found on the user's computer.
This is very standard and common stuff. If you do not maintain a firewall along with anti-virus software, then at some point in time, you will be invaded and provided with many hours of entertainment: trying to rid yourself of one or more viruses and to have your email addresses (of those to whom you write) co-opted and subject to both harassment and spam. This is what you do for the people whose addresses appear in a TO (very readable) field.
Please remember, these are mostly the words my brother wrote to me. So if there is something personal in his explanation, it is NOT directed to you, but to me.
1 Ping is an acronym for the words, Packet InterNet Groper. Pinging is used by computer technicians to test a connection between computers, such as in a network where several computers are connected. The technician enters an IP address into the computer he is working on and attempts to establish contact with the computer whose IP address he entered.
2 IP Address - Internet Protocol Address This is a unique string of numbers that identifies a computer or server on the Internet . These numbers are normally shown in groups separated by periods. Example: 216.239.51.100 is Google 's IP address .
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