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MacRumors Account Being Hacked

S.B.G

S.B.G

Moderator emeritus
Original poster
Sep 8, 2010
26,923
11,014
Detroit
My MacRumors account has had someone trying to crack it in the last hour. Has anyone else had this happen to them today or recently? I received two automated emails from MR telling me this and gave me the IP's of each attempt.

195.71.226.87 was the first attempt at 0546 -0500 GMT and location is Germany

174.36.199.200 was the second attempt at 0608 -0500 GMT and this location was Wichita, Kansas , United States.

My account was locked for 15 minutes by MR automatically after 5 failed attempts.

I was asleep when this happened so I know it wasn't me, especially since I am nowhere near either location. Fortunately I have a strong password and kudos to MR for locking the account and sending me a notification of the attempts.
 
I don't want to sound mean or horrible, but surely there's always people trying to hack accounts on websites? It's great that the accounts are automatically locked after so many attempts though.
 
R94N said:
I don't want to sound mean or horrible, but surely there's always people trying to hack accounts on websites? It's great that the accounts are automatically locked after so many attempts though.
Click to expand...

Oh of course there are always people trying to crack accounts. I'm just surprised that out of 522,574 MR's members, I got "chosen" to be attacked!

I guess the point of my thread was to see how many other folks had their accounts here attacked.
 
SandboxGeneral said:
Oh of course there are always people trying to crack accounts. I'm just surprised that out of 522,574 MR's members, I got "chosen" to be attacked!

I guess the point of my thread was to see how many other folks had their accounts here attacked.
Click to expand...

Someone tried to hit mine a while back
I reported it, and had no further issues
 
maybe they are practicing to then go after your FaceBook account and get the really juicy stuff. :cool:
 
Apple OC said:
maybe they are practicing to then go after your FaceBook account and get the really juicy stuff. :cool:
Click to expand...

It's quite possible. Good thing for me I don't do Facebook, Twitter or MySpace! ;)
 
Last edited:
I don't think it's you personally, SandboxGeneral. Many hackers are in fact software, systematically trying many passwords on many accounts. It looks like this is one of those cases since we've heard multiple reports about it.

To all:

The key to protecting your MacRumors account, and accounts at other sites, is a non-guessable password. No obvious patterns of letters and digits and no dictionary words or people's names. And never use your user name as your password -- yes, people have done this!

Many people have the false impression that adding a digit somehow makes a password secure. If your password is "robert1" or "3liz1beth", it's still guessable. Passwords don't have to be long, just not meaningful to anyone else.
 
Doctor Q said:
I don't think it's you personally, SandboxGeneral. Many hackers are in fact software, systematically trying many passwords on many accounts. It looks like this is one of those cases since we've heard multiple reports about it.
Click to expand...

I agree with you, I never thought it was a personal account attack and probably a bot network or something running a dictionary attack.

I assume it's bot networks or something that creates false accounts here and posts things to sell sometimes.
 
maflynn said:
How can you tell, that someone was trying to do this?
Click to expand...

After 5 failed attempts to login to MR, your account is locked for 15 minutes and an automatic notification email is sent to you advising of the failed attempts. Plus it gives you the IP address of where the failed attempts come from.
 
Another good reason to use programs like 1Password to generate random passwords and store them for you--and makes it easy to never use the same password for more than one account. :)
 
A corollary: If anybody gets a spam PM, such as an ad from a forum user they don't know, please click the "Report Private Message"
report.gif
icon in the top right corner to report the PM. It may indicate that the PM-sender's account was successfully broken into.
 
bobr1952 said:
Another good reason to use programs like 1Password to generate random passwords and store them for you--and makes it easy to never use the same password for more than one account. :)
Click to expand...

I recently just started doing this with LastPass. Very pleased with it so far.
 
SandboxGeneral said:
After 5 failed attempts to login to MR, your account is locked for 15 minutes and an automatic notification email is sent to you advising of the failed attempts. Plus it gives you the IP address of where the failed attempts come from.
Click to expand...

Or an Vbulletin forum for that matter. It's not a MacRumors only thing.
 
Been there too....

In January 2007 my MR account was hacked by two IP Addresses registered to the South African arm of a well-known online sales corporation based in Seattle. MR's security protocols functioned properly and other than being locked-out for a while I've had no further problems. :apple:
 
eRondeau said:
In January 2007 my MR account was hacked by two IP Addresses registered to the South African arm of a well-known online sales corporation based in Seattle. MR's security protocols functioned properly and other than being locked-out for a while I've had no further problems. :apple:
Click to expand...

I had a fairly strong password for MR when my account was attacked, but I went and changed it to an even stronger one afterward. One can never be too careful.
 
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