ISKCON NewsThe News Agency of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness

Hackers Hijack Devotee E-mail Accounts

Image: get-aroundtoit.com

Scheme is electronic version of an old-fashioned con.

"Help! I'm stranded in London and the airline lost my luggage. Can you send me some money right away so I can get home?"

Several devotees have received such fraudulent e-mails within the last week from the accounts of close friends. The messages are, in fact, from hackers who have taken over the accounts. Anyone receiving such a request is encouraged to telephone or contact the sender in some other way. Replies to the e-mail will only reach the perpetrator, as the original owner no longer has access.

The problem potentially lies in the simplicity of many e-mail account passwords.

"Five years ago a password of six characters was considered safe," says Varnadi Dasa, webmaster for ISKCON Alachua. "Now, an avarage,combined brute-force and dictionary attack will get that password in
less than a minute. So, passwords like 123, abc, krishna, radha, haribol, vishnu108, etc. no longer do the job."

Instead, he recommends creating two or three secure passwords, from a combination of letters + numbers and at least one punctuation mark, and using those for all your electronic accounts.