Hacking attempt

[deejannon]

Hello I do not know who to contact with this but somebody with the ip of {edited for privacy} hacked my email and changed all of my passwords and I would like to report them. It seems they are using Fios but i can't email support because I am not a customer myself. Thank you and have a nice day.

[deejannon]

No one can help me with this?

[ElizabethS]

Have patience. It is the weekend and many of our regular users have weekend things to do. I'm sure you'll get a response.

[deejannon]

 Thank you. I forgot it was the weekend. This whole hacking thing has me very distraught I feel like someone came to my house and just rooted through all of my stuff.

[Hubrisnxs]

http://www22.verizon.com/about/privacy/personalinformation/

You can forward information to abuse@Verizon.net but unless you have a police report and or legal actiongoing on, then you will want to take steps to protect yourself. Do you have a firewall? You should try to block that ip address. Comodo internet security is a decent free solution if you don't subscribe to a firewall software today.

[DONOTLIKEFIOS]

I truly sympathize because I've been complaining of such events myself for some time, all to no avail.

On the "up" side, Verizon provides a truly wonderful home firewall router for FIOS.  What you can do to help yourself, and you likely should do this, is change the password on the firewall/router.  Relize that there is even an iPhone app on the Web to hack your default FIOS password.

When setting the password (push and hold in the little white button on the back of the router/firewall until it resets) you can cut and paste the password in initially but thereafer, you will really need to type the password in.  Cutting and pasting won't work, so use all typeable characters.

On the next step, test your configuration frequently AND THEN SAVE IT AFTERWARD as you're imputting the firewall data.  If you lock yourself out of the router/firewall, you'll be able to reset the router/firewall and restore the configuration with the work that actually was successful.

Then block every inbound protocol (Input Rule Sets: Manage all incoming traffic from the Internet) on your network (Home/Office) rules except for:

1 - ICMP

6 - TCP

17 - UDP

This will not impede all inbound traffic, only connections originating from outside of your router/firewall.  Any connections you originate (both outbound traffic and inbound traffic on those connections) will not be prohibited by these rules. 

There are 256 possible protocols, of which the router firewall will allow you to block 255 of them, which is a really arguous undertaking.

Understand that IP protocols, and ports within IP protocols, are two distict subjects.  For a list of IP protocols, please see:

http://www.iana.org/assignments/protocol-numbers/protocol-numbers.xml

For an easily readable list of common TCP and UDP ports, please see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_TCP_and_UDP_port_numbers#Well-known_ports:_0.E2.80.931023

For a compendium of ICMP ports, please see:

http://www.iana.org/assignments/icmp-parameters/icmp-parameters.xml

Then block all inbound (Input Rule Sets: Manage all incoming traffic from the Internet) TCP and UDP ports except for UDP ports 33434 to 33534 (which are needed for trace route).

Because hackers can malform IP packets to appear to have originated from inside your private network, you will want to block the same protocols for outbound connections (Output Rule Sets: Manage all outbound traffic to the Internet) on your network (Home/Office) rules but and keep the same range (33434 to 33534 ) of UDP ports open and also KEEP OPEN THE FOLLOWING RANGES OF TCP and UDP ports outbound, so that you can communicate with the Internet:

20 - 21 UDP
22 - Secure Shell
25 - SMTP
37 - Time
53 - DNS
80 - HTTP
109 - POP2 (mail)
110 - POP3 (mail)
123 - NTP
143 - IMAP (mail)
220 - IMAP (mail)
443 - HTTPS
525 - Time Server
587 - SMTP
989 - 990 - FTP over SSL
993 - IMAP (Mail) over SSL
1755 - MMS

33434 to 33534 (UDP ports for Trace Route)

49152 - 65535

Without going into great detail about the vulnerabilities you're otherwise exposed to, this will help you help yourself. 

It is still possible for a hacker to block your Internet access for a while, and they may very well try to do that to convince you to drop your firewall, but Verizon is likely to help you with that, or you can just turn off your router for an hour and usually, they'll go away.  If you turn off you router for a long time, Verizon may assign you a new Internet IP address.

This is not completely safe because hackers can still use DNS poisoning to pretend to be a router or host they're not but if you connect to your email, bank accounts, etc., using a secure connection (i.e. HTTPS) you will either not connect at all, if the hacker is feigning that site, or you will connect securely in a way transparent to the hacker.

Good luck!

John Dodrill

johnswebpage.com