Warning to ebay sellers - a cautionary tale

rangerssuck · 2012-04-12T02:25:27+00:00

One of my customers has a good-sized business selling on ebay - at anytime he has thousands of auctions in progress, and he's been making avery healthy living for himself and a half-dozen employees for severalyears.Recently, he was travelling in China visiting suppliers. He used thehotel wifi (I forget which hotel, but one of the major chains) to dosome ebay business. Someone hijacked his ebay account and put uphundreds of auctions that looked legit, but with a rogue paypalaccount.When he got back to his office this week, my guy found tons of emailfrom "his" customers looking for shipments from auctions they had wonand paid for. I'm sure this will be worked out between ebay andpaypal, but still, it's a cautionary tale.

Apr 12, 2012 26 Replies

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Spehro Pefhany 14 years ago

Presumably the flash drive is being used to transmit data to and from another (less secure system). If you use a new (known safe) flash drive every time and only transmit data out of the secure system you should be okay.

Anything else has vulnerabilities, even to script kiddies. Imagine the second computer is seething with viruses, and it contaminates the flash drive as soon as you insert it. Try to format it on the virus-laden computer and it loads it with the virus at the same time. Stick it in the secure computer to format it and it infects the secure computer.

That sure helps.

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Jim Wilkins 14 years ago

"Richard" wrote

You can have a secure PC or network without Net access (my HDTV recorder), a less secure one behind a firewall, and a stand-alone Honeypot to trap and reveal threats. I use this one for both of the latter, by visiting software download sites only after making a C: backup.

The Microsoft Update Catalog contains updates that you can download to an on-line PC and install on the off-line ones.

formatting link

jsw

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James Waldby 14 years ago

From that document, you would want anything like a camera, smart phone, tablet, or Kindle etc. also to be forensically clean; all of them being subject to Customs and Border Protection searches.

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Wes 14 years ago

I believe the Iranians had their centrifuges hosed by a virus that used this path. Stuxnet comes to mind.

Wes

-- "Additionally as a security officer, I carry a gun to protect government officials but my life isn't worth protecting at home in their eyes." Dick Anthony Heller

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Ignoramus29686 14 years ago

I recall reading the same thing.

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Joseph Gwinn 14 years ago

The point was to prevent loss of data (even when infected), not to prevent infection. Nothing is perfect, but there are things one can do to sharply reduce the potential loss.

Joe Gwinn

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Larry Jaques 14 years ago

How about two physical switches and two computers? One system is connected to the Internet for online transactions for your business. Modem is physically switchable to OFF.

Keep financial info on the disconnected system. System is physically switchable to grab info from Internet connected system ONLY when modem is turned off. Turn modem switch off and interconnect switch on, transfer data, toggle both switches.

-- Happiness is not a station you arrive at, but a manner of traveling. -- Margaret Lee Runbeck

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