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Re: [OT] Has my e-mail account been hacked?



On 13/10/15 00:57, Florian Pelgrim wrote:
>> (2) Someone sent out a bunch of SPAM, spoofing my e-mail address
>> > as the sender, and the delivery failures came to me.
>> > 
>> > How can I tell which is the case, and if it's (2), is there anything
>> > I can do to defend myself against this sort of thing in the future?
> You could check the header of one email you know you send and one of the
> others.
> I guess what you are getting is simple backscatter spam like in (2) you
> described.

I'd check the backscatter case, as this requires no skill on the part of
the attacker and is the most likely case.

I've been on the receiving end of a backscatter deluge before.  Not fun.

I actually harvested the offending hosts and used the emails as evidence
of spam activity to have the site brought down.  I found there were 6
machines sending the crap, WHOIS look-ups were performed, and emails
written to those six hosts with samples of the bounces provided, along
with the host hosting the website concerned.

The dead give-away was that the initial "Received" header did not match
any of my hosts.  In fact, all they had done was put my address in the
Return-Path.

It's worth knowing how to read the headers of emails in this
circumstance as it can give you vital information for knowing what is
going on.
-- 
Stuart Longland (aka Redhatter, VK4MSL)

I haven't lost my mind...
  ...it's backed up on a tape somewhere.

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