Help, my e-mail has been hacked!

A few days ago, I had a bad experience: one of my personal email accounts was hacked! In recent weeks, the hacker used my address to send spam to some of my contacts. Panic, I simply deleted that address that I do really, because I was too afraid of getting hacked again!

I asked a few tips to protect Internet accounts to Kamal , our Security expert.

Elodie: How does my email account has been hacked it?

Kamal : "It is possible, but I doubt that the hacker was able to get a complete list of accounts, in part yours. This is typically what has happened in the Sony case in April. There are other options. From the 80's such a technology was to try to log into a server using an account that we know exist and providing passwords from "dictionaries". An alternative to this technique: Use a password generator in place of "dictionaries". We start for example yyyy, AAAB, AAAC ... Logically, the server "attacked" has a security process that blocks these attempts to identify repeated. That said, all servers do not have this type of protection, far from it ... Another explanation is the outright theft of your password. For example, malicious code (viruses, Trojan ...) has infected your machine has stolen your password and then referred them to others. Finally, the attacker "close" who knows you very well. In this case, you're the first fault in what happens to you! Like many users, you can use passwords that are directly related to you (eg your date of birth, the name of your animal, your spouse's first name ...). The attacker knows his information and was therefore able to easily turn your account. "