MSE News: eBay cyber-attack: Change your passwords, auction site warns users

harveybobbles wrote: »

I just got this when I logged into eBay..

Yes, I get the same been trying for over 3 hours (on and off) and still not able to edit password. Take months to let on there is a security breech and then they make it nigh impossible to change password.

Yes what an awful muddle.

eBay and its customers are like rabbits stuck in headlights in the middle of the road. Doesn't it just show what how delicate this whole corporate sham about cyber-security really is ?

You have the likes of GingerBob (and a few more of us) telling corporates white-lies about our DoBs and Mother's maiden name to protect ourselves a little from exactly this kind of data theft (I think even we are kidding ourselves), but more importantly you have corporates telling us that they know we ('people') do that so they don't close the shutters when a little bit of inconsistent data is given to them by fraudsters, even when that means they end up with that same inconsistent data then incorporated into the body of their so-called security! Security so easily becomes "lies within lies" and we know what happens when three or more parties start telling each other lies, and know that they are likely to be told lies but essentially ignoring what is said and instead forming opinion based on the view of incoming from their own side - chaos and warzones.

So into the warzones you get infiltrators , either recruited or just doing their own thing and making contact with baddies, and because corporates employ so many here today gone tomorrow types and give them almost unbridled electronic access to customer data, we are asking for trouble, aren't we?

An employee may not even join a company like ebay with fraud in mind, but if they get fed up or too poor to resist temptation, they sell a bit of data to make ends meet ! Except its not a bit, is it ? It's bytes - Gigabytes and even Terrabytes in their pocket if they like but probably easier if they get login details and sufficient remote access authority so an associate can then login from a beach in San Franscisco St Petersburg Sri Lanka or Sidney and download stuff at 45Mbps and can in each case pretend to be in an ebay office or at home in Siberia. And if I really wish to physically transport data, who would believe that the 'easy-swap' 8GB MicroSD no bigger than a little finger nail in my six year old mobile phone could hold as much data a 8,000 copies of the Holy Bible, and whilst doing it, it also contains enough standalone TomTom data to navigate me reliably by road and foot all the way between London and a seedy office I was invited to visit above a bagel shop in St Petersburg ?

Meantime we all get herded this way and that like slightly uneasy sheep by ebay, by the media, by government and even by MSE! Yes not rabbits, for they are the inadequate corporate units caught defenceless. We are the sheep. The shepherds seem to be organised crime as alluded to by Pincher. That's not good.

It's probably not a coincidence (someone realising it is a good story to post at this moment) but this morning I received a link to an article about how few official resources stand against cyber-crime in the UK: http://www.idgconnect.com/blog-abstract/8297/uk-policing-unfit-purpose-digital-age-former-cop.

Oh just one thing Bob - you said

From the point of view of identity theft this should not be much of an issue.

Remember this to organised crime is simply a numbers game or an intelligence game if you like. Forget the low-level employees who sold their login details or whatever they did, up the chain, organised criminals are not acquiring this data in isolation. They already have heaps of personal data from other sources some good, some bad. Every time they receive some more, they can confirm more and more as good or bad so their intelligence is continually becoming more and more potent. And remember, they are not like government secret intelligence (or at least I hope not!) so they are not choosy about who to attack next - they let their computers tell them which targets are now ripe for picking.

Why has it taken two weeks for them to notify us?

Ralph-y wrote: »

transcript from Ebay chat:-

The modern definition of a masochist, someone who goes on to Live Chat to complain. No one actually cares or will do anything about it.

Frank Spencer finally got a job he could stick at, crisis management for Ebay. They really have managed to make a bigger mess out of something that they could have easily played down and not for the first time.

frank_potter wrote: »

The Twitter account of user “oneEyedJack5” indicates the extent of the scams and fraud taking place:
https://twitter.com/OneEyedJack5

One eyed Jack sounds wild:p