My Ebay account hacked

I opened up Thunderbird and received 126 notifications from ebay of listings to my account this morning. Here is one of them:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=190008271583

I am the seller (apparently) of Guild Wars GW 200K~1000K Gold Money Platinum 24/7 GBP

I have contacted ebay by contact form on their site but am a little bit unsettled by the lack of a phone number for something I percieve as urgent.

In the meantime I have changed the password for both my ebay account and also the Paypal account linked to it.

I will keep you posted on updates as I hear them.  Anyone else seen strange ebay going's on? I will be interested to see if this was indeed a brute force password hack or is there another explanation.

keith

Comments

[Ken McGuire]

After speaking to you earlier it still seems like you're the only one on ebay.ie selling that item. Any chance I can take ten of them? I have a few friends.... discount on shipping maybe? ;)

[Conor O'Neill]

The eBay phishing has got pretty bad recently alright.

The poor phishy-lambs always pick products which I would never be selling in a million years.

Note that IE7's anti-phish filter will catch dodgy URLs and hopefully help click-junkies.

[keith bohanna]

Unfortunately (or fortunately) not a phish Conor. I have not, and never will hopefully :-) clicked on a phish link. For ebay or anything else.

keith

[Conroy]

The same thing just happened to me this morning, and I became the seller of 30 handbags.. I had never sold anything before, so I also got emails from ebay congratulating me on becoming a seller.

I contacted ebay and got a response back saying change my ebay and email passwords and cancel the listings (which turns out to be a huge pain to do)

The odd thing was that the hacker seems to have entered his own cc# and the paypal payment option points to my own email

[keith bohanna]

Hi Conor

you did better than me - I engaged ebay in a live session (IM support) and got frozen out of my account.

In the meantime I have changed all of my webservice logins to random alpha, muneric, symbolic passwords :-)

keith

[Conroy]

I just found out that my friend got her account hacked this morning too to sell a bunch of electronics stuff

ebay closed her account to fix everything

i wonder if there is some mass security problem at ebay going on

[Conroy]

http://www.azcentral.com/news/columns/articles/0703action0703.html

[brendan]

i got hacked, i guess i was selling 50 DVD's and Fox said i was in violation of there VeRO clause.
some sold is how i found out... i have never sold anything on ebay... the hacker even put a credit card number on my account, how ever all i could see was the last 4 number and the exp. date.

sample e-mail
However, your listing was in violation of eBay's Other VeRO Claims policy.

because Fox (Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation) reported it to us for violating their intellectual property rights. When eBay is notified by a rights owner of an intellectual property rights infringement, eBay must remove the item in order to meet certain legal requirements.

The following information may help explain the reason for this notice:

[EDITED by Keith for brevity]

Regards,

Customer Support (Trust and Safety Department)
eBay Inc

[Cherish]

They used mine to sell shoes. Got 84 notifications of new listings so I logged into ebay to cancel the auctions and change my password. I was right in the middle of deleting them when I got locked out of my account. I emailed ebay explaining that it wasn't me and I sent them a copy of the email I had received telling me to update my credit card on my account, that it was about to expire. A few days later they emailed me back saying the email was a fake. I asked if they would reinstate my account since it wasn't me and they said that they would "possibly" unsuspend my account after a year. A YEAR for something I didn't even do!

I can't change the details on my account because they locked me out, although the email they sent me says to do so. One email even said that I've never been an ebay user.

That's nice...lock me out of my non-existent account, tell me to update it while I'm locked out, then tell me I've never been a user when I start inquiring about what happened.

After a month of mostly one-sided conversations with ebay's live help (aka "no help"), I found this ebay suspension help site at http://ebaysuspension.ezguidebooks.com - It got me back on and I've been selling for the last 6 months with no problems.

I did receive another email that looks like it's from ebay, so I just forwarded a copy to them to see if it's for real. I wonder what they'll say this time.

[Simon]

Have you been able to work out how they got access to your account on ebay? I too just had this happen to me, and I NEVER fall for phishing emails etc. I ALWAYS go to ebay directly (And all other such sites) to enter details or change anything. I also use Firefox and thunderbird for Web Browsing and email... And have AVG running on all my PCs. Also, my password is random letters, no word or anything that could be hacked via a dictionary attack. (if they are using words that is)

I just don't know how they got access, and am quite concerned for the security of other sites I use as I tend to stick to a small number of passwords (I can't remember large swags of them)

[keith bohanna]

Thanks all for comments - I am not alone!

Simon - I think I was hacked because I did something similiar to yourself. I used a common password across multiple sites so with knowledge of even one of them you could get into my ebay account easily.

I have now changed that as mentioned above - and I use a piece of software to manage all of my passwords!

keith

[jenna]

i got hacked this week. I found LiveHelp at Ebay to be a bit of a help... it's like a chat thing where you talk to an ebay worker. They seemed to be adamant that it was phishing or spyware that landed me in this situation, but I don't know anyone with a system as secure as mine and i would never ever fall for phishing. There was bills of over two grand run up in 3 days and the IP address came from Beijing. I wondered if anyone else managed to find out where they had been hacked from? Was anyone else left with thousands of unpaid bids for nike trainers? It's so odd...

[Paul G]

Heya Ladies, Gents. I am in the same boat as you all. I logged into my email to discover, thankfully, only 2 listings had been made before eBay’s auditing system/whatever was alerted, my account was locked, alert emails sent and all active listings cancelled. I’m pretty thankful they seemed to have gotten an handle on this stuff. The real pain is in getting my account reactivated.

As most of you I had 1 password, alpha-numeric 11 with characters that would have been impossible to guess or hack via dictionary crackers, etc. In investigated I found that there are many exploits available to attack MS Windows OS’ that allow hackers to run malicious software, directly or via tainted websites. This software will seek out cookies with password info. In this/my case, I think I became of victim when my router/firewall at home broke and for a few days I connected directly to the internet and procrastinated a bit before going out and buying another. It must’ve been about a 1 week/7 days and in that time they got me! Very frustrating because I keep my OS automatically updated (Windows Update Scheduler) and I also automatically keep my Virus Scan up to date. So I think someone connected to my machine via an exploit, obviously MS doesn’t know about yet and ran some software to sniff out my eBay cookies and password.

So from here on out, I WILL NOT connect to the internet without firewall and I will no longer check that little box that says “keep me signed in” when I log into eBay.

[Gilby]

Yeah my eBay account was hacked like a dream while i was on holiday, they listed a ton of handbags but ebay caught them and suspended my account, The live help worked well and thankfully im nearly sorted out but Im amazed how some1 managed to crack my password, its so weird, im no techno weenie either so i cant think it's down to phishing!

[Dave]

Not sure if everyone here's Irish, but you can count eBay's American operations among the victims. I, too, wound up with about 70 listings for fake handbags this morning before eBay caught it (about 2 hours in). Luckily, I'm a compulsive e-mail checker, and caught the bot in progress (location names entered in the auctions were strings of random alphabetic characters). It's not a phish, I'm convinced--I forward those things straight to spoof@ebay.com. I'm leaning toward OS exploit.

[Gary Huckabay]

I got hit by the same thing today (USA, comcast.). Live help was helpful, actually. Apparently, they listed about 50 pairs of Chanel sunglasses. If it *is* an OS exploit, which I would guess, what should I do? I've changed the passwords that I use all over the web. What a pain. Suggestions on checking the OS exploit possibility?

Thanks...

[Ebay Seller]

I was just hacked too in the USA - I am a Seller but a listing I was trying to sell was hacked - apparently a hacker has attached a "buy it now paypal" icon that when clicked on attached itself to a phony paypal website and THEN to this phisher/hacker's bank account. Trying to get live help now on Ebay, also emailed security @ Ebay & Paypal

[Nat Holloway]

My account was hacked as well. Odd thing is that i have not used the account in over a year. Someone listed over 100 items within 3 minutes selling copyrighted material. I've requested the logs from eBay on the attack and am considering legal action since I'm getting nasty grams from them and Fox. Has anyone had any success getting these types of logs from eBay? I'm concerned that eBay's servers are being hacked into and account information is being stolen that way. They like to lead you on saying that it is you that is responsible, but I don't buy that. I am a security professional and like the other posters here am savvy to the phishing scams, et al. I also believe that my credit card got stolen from there as well. Has anyone considered or has sued eBay on their security practices or lack thereof?

[keith bohanna]

This post has more comments than any other on this blog! I have got to say that my account being hacked was probably because I had been using the same username and password in a number of places.

That has stopped now!

keith

[Reverend James Ackeridge]

Ebay dose not only have a problem with hacking. My dad died over 3 years ago and we have the same first and last name. For a month, they have called here one or two times a day trying to collect on a $45.00 charge that my dad had run up when he was alive. I told them if they can wait, I will ask him how he would like to pay this. His remains sit in a box in my living room. I have send the information on his death, proof that he was cremated. I filed with the State Department Attorney General's Office.

The other problem I have is with these "Ebay snappers". Any auction I have ever been to, when one places a bid on an item, that extends the auction to allow someone else a chance to bid again. The auctioneer says, "going, going, sold!". Not, oops too late! EBay’s way of auctions, not only loose money for Ebay, but looses money for the seller as well. Just the other day I was bidding on an item and I bid I think $30.00 and someone used a snapper and bid $30.05 and won the item with 2 seconds to go in the auction. I am at the point where I will not buy from Ebay and if I did not have some much stuff to get rid of in my home I would not sell on Ebay. If you feel this should be changed and would like to join me in my quest on making this right, please contact me.

Now on the topic, I found the best way to keep passwords secrete is buy using a figure print scanner. The system I use encrypts your username and pass words and by passes your key board. This will stop the problem with key stroke spyware. I never save cookies on my computers. Sometimes this can be a pain with some sites but it is worth the trouble for the most part. I have a firewall on my ISP’s router and my sub router as well as each of my computers. I don’t trust the outside internet. Well good luck my friends.

Reverend James

[Kevin]

Add me to the "me too" list -- I'm not a computer dummy, I don't respond to fake e-mails, etc. I logged into my account to list one item (which I did), and the next day I was also selling 100 pairs of Oakley sunglasses. I, too, am stumped as to how my account was compromised.

[Jennifer]

I was also hacked yesterday - I had 40 dvd box sets for sale. Now my account has been canceled for copyright infringement and I owe Ebay $100 for insertion fees. I've submitted the proper "reports" so hopefully it gets solved soon. Not impressed with Ebay these days!

[jimmi]

Well, I got hacked too! I had like 16 WII's for sale and people bought the units. I discovered the issue when a few payments made it to my house, and deposits being made into my checking acct via my cc company. Logged into my account, promptly emailed Ebay, because good luck on getting a live voice call through, went thru the steps of resetting my pw. I have lots of request of people looking for their stuff, some people have even requested my personal info???. At this point I am angry, and scared. Ive been waiting 4 days for Ebay to advs me on what needs to be done to get these people their money back.. out of my acct, but I have not recieved a response. So I will take it on myself to contact them and inform them of the situation.. and see how it goes.

[Jim]

Used my eBay account day before yesterday OK. Yesterday I was locked out. I managed to get live chat to eBay & get back in (using a known secure computer several miles from the first just in case it had been compromised). I reset the password & security question and found 2 fake items listed "for sale", which eBay deleted when I alerted them. So far so good. When I tried to log into eBay last night (from the first computer again) I was locked out again and I found that my security question had been changed by whoever had locked me out. The first computer hadn't ever had the new password typed in until I attempted to log into eBay last night. The one several miles away has even more security on it than mine (both have firewalls, virus checkers, anti spyware etc. and I haven't clicked any "email" links either). So is the hacker relating information from several different and unrelated computers, or do eBay have a security problem on their servers?

[David Grimwade]

Just been hacked for the second time. Someone listed some useless shite for sale on my account. Both passwords I have previously used have been secure, just like the two different PCs and locations I have been using since the hacks. I can only think it's ebay's servers that are letting everyone down and really infuriating me!