Somebody I've talked to online a few times over the last 8 months or so just tried to hack my MSN. I'm very flattered and thought I'd show how it's done for informational purposes.

Also he might be in contact with some of you out there, and might be trying the same thing with a lot of different people just hoping he gets a bite or two, so heads up.

It's not very subtle. They make themselves familiar so you won't be suspicious of them, then one day they send you something like this:



LOL !??!?! OMG!!!

It's a bad idea to even click on the link. I was curious though, so I booted up a different computer running a different platform, and the link lead to this:



Yeah, not very subtle. A non-Microsoft owned site asking for my MSN login information. The parts of the original links that were "?user=*******&img=" etc are fields that he probably uses to categorize which people are inputing which information, which is why I say he's probably trying this on a lot of different people.

What can happen if you fall for this:

If this e-mail is associated with any of your poker accounts, he can go through the support systems for all of those poker sites using your e-mail address, and have your passwords reset, giving him full access to your poker accounts.

If you have a reputation in online poker as a player or as a trader, he can abuse that reputation to try to have people on your MSN list send money to accounts that he controls (stealing money from your contacts).

How to avoid this:

Don't click on links in any instant messenger. Ever. Some people you think you can trust would probably be willing to abuse that trust if they think there's a chance they could chipdump 50 grand to themselves. If you are going to, do it from a separate computer, or if it's a domain you know you can trust, copy-paste the link instead of clicking it. Using features of IM software, people can disguise one link as another, kind of like this:

http://www.yahoo.com

And if you currently have an e-mail address associated with both a messenger and your poker accounts, you should probably fix that right now. Have a separate e-mail associated with your poker accounts and don't give it away freely. If hackers don't even know what the e-mail address is, it's basically like you have two passwords instead of one.

The guy you have talked with doesnt have to necessarily know the hack attempt.

Most likely it just shows that this guy has a MSN worm on his computer. (google for it).


In most cases the person from which you receive a link (e.g. pictures) isnt even online (MSN) which means it is an automatic message created by the MSN worm (i.e. the other guy is also victim).

Good post, and good point at the end.

I think you're right about this.

If that's the case though, individuals could still disguise their phishing attempt as one of these automated worm messages, that way if you don't fall for it they can just tell you it wasn't them.

But I guess if this is a genuine worm, the way it works is if you fall for it, the worm grabs your MSN info and automatically uses it to forward this same phishing message to your contact list, further replicating itself into infinity.

To what end, I really have no idea. It's probably just disabling MSN accounts left and right.

I guess its only purpose would be havoc. I don't see how the perpetrator could profit from that.