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TeamViewer Servers Go Down, Users Believe They Are Hacked (softpedia.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Softpedia: Something is happening with TeamViewers servers at the moment, and all clues point to a massive breach that has led to many users going on Reddit and complaining about having their computers hacked. Some users have reported finding new transactions in their PayPal and bank accounts, while others discovered someone had been poking around their email account. Other lucky users said they barely avoided getting hacked at the last minute, noticing their mouse starting to move across the screen, and hurrying to disconnect their Internet connection. On Twitter, the TeamViewer team wrote that they're only experiencing issues in some parts of their network, but they denied any security breach, at least on their side. In the past months, we've seen malware use TeamViewer many times to infect computers, but most of those cases were because of users who used weak passwords, which is certainly not TeamViewer's fault. It is strange that this time around, just when TeamViewer servers go down, multiple users also flock to social media to complain about getting hacked. This is either one huge strange cosmic coincidence or TeamViewer is really at fault and won't be able to pin the blame on its users. On a semi-related note, PayPal will be suspending their business operations in Turkey after failing to obtain a new license for its service in the country.
No, it's just softpedia being useless. As usual, deja-vu all over again.
A totally different story!
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
Other lucky users said they barely avoided getting hacked at the last minute, noticing their mouse starting to move across the screen, and hurrying to disconnect their Internet connection.
Literally laughing out loud reading this.
Most likely TV has been compromised.
Much less likely, a widespread MitM.
Anyone have wireshark dumps?
I don't think there is an OS today that doesn't have built-in remote support... why would you ever install some shady 3rd party program? I guess people get a lot of calls from uh, "Microsoft Support" and then install it...
Teamviewer!=Facebook
Of what Web 2.0 bullshit TeamViewer is?
back in the day I had an open VNC server running on my PC. One day our company hired some consultants to help secure our network. I was working along and I saw my mouse move in a way I didn't move it and I immediately pulled the network cable and traced the IP and made some calles...
about computers being hacked, is about like watching "social media" jump on something before THE TRUTH is known. Social media blows up a story, then when the TRUTH comes out, they won't believe it anyway. Just think Ferguson...
Why not use a source that isn't Nth-hand and deliberately breathless and content-free?
Stuff it with the softpedia-repeating. Use a real news source. Seriously.
Actually, a lot of corporations migrated over to TeamViewer after a fiasco with LogMeIn eliminating their free version of their software.
http://lifehacker.com/remote-d...
Corporate I.T. likes these types of remote assistance packages, primarily because they let you set up a whole list of computers to click to connect with, under a single "master" account. It's really convenient to have all of your company's workstations organized by department or group and easily visible as to which are online and which are offline.
We used LogMeIn for this until they started talking about charging us thousands for what used to be free. That's when TeamViewer kind of popped up out of nowhere, promising equivalent functionality at no cost and a great migration path off of LogMeIn.
TeamViewer gives a unified interface for remote controlling everything set up with it, no matter what platform (Linux, Mac or Windows) and gives the ability to reboot a Windows PC in "safe mode" and still connect back up to it (great for malware removal purposes, etc.).
I've always thought Microsoft's remote desktop client needs a LOT of improvement, so these 3rd. party solutions aren't so necessary.
X does 3 more things than Y and leads to an increase in A, B and C.
On a semi-related note, Space-x lands a reusable rocket.
It seems like 1 articles sensationalist claims are targeting 2 birds. /.'s stories have become a joke - sigh
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Teamviewer says that there is no breach. That users that were compromised had not secured their remote systems with a password. I'm a teamviewer user, and have not had any of my systems compromised. It also seems apparent from the Reddit threads, that most of those people just left connections constantly open without even locking the remote system screen.
I have nothing clever to put here...
> Windows's remote support
For Windows, here are a few options to take over their system which don't require the user to click anything:
https://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/...
Just went through this on Monday. I have an uncle I help remotely from time to time so I have(had) team viewer installed as a service. Get a call that someone had started remote controlling his laptop. He rebooted and uninstalled it immediately from his laptop and I changed up the team viewer passwords.
If it's that easy to find many many sources, why not do a little source selection?
Would reduce the number of complaints about poor "news" sources, breathless websites, woolly wordsalads full of wilfully empty words, stupid script submissions, and so on, and so forth. We might even get a usable /. back.
In this age, who is stupid enough to run this shit on bare hardware? Untrusted stuff goes in a VM. Especially things that control your machine. WTF. Who would even consider allowing that on their core machine?
If you choose some of those options, then yeah they'll need to click the link. The font etc you can probably just use in your email to them. Give em ten minutes, they'll click that "new email" notification without being asked.
I only use team viewer occasionally and I think only have one macine running with it installed.
Anyway I setup a teamviewer account back in 2010 but I didn't end up needing it I had not recived any emails from them until this year and now i'm getting "New contact request" emails from teamviewer.
Is this some type of overly complicated spam or what?
who is this "ARIA-PC"?
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
I saw my Paypal e-mailed me today that there was a transaction. I immediately disputed that transaction and changed my password. I didn't know it was through TeamViewer that the hacker got in until now. So I've turned off all Teamviewer on my computers. I changed Teamviewer's password too, before that when I saw the log, it said someone logged in from Beijing yesterday. So far I haven't found any other unauthorized transaction yet other than 1 on Paypal which they refunded me already. Cross fingers that there is no more.
Use RealVNC & learn how to reverse connections. If you need direct access set a strong password, don't use port 5900, use Encryption, set your BlacklistThreshold & BlacklistTimeout.
You can't embed fonts in emails last time I checked.
(Real piss off to the marketing team who wants the newsletters sent with custom fonts... which virtually all if not absolutely all mailclients completely ignored.)
And even if you could embed the font in an email (like you can in a web page) that doesn't install it on the local system.
"TeamViewers servers"
Illiterate American cretins.
It happened to me. ive used teamviewer for YEARS.. always had strongest algorythm set. and this never happened before.. and about 4 months ago while I was at work one night someone logged into my computer TWICE. once quite briefly to see if anyone was using the computer.. logged off... came back about an hr later and opened my browser... went to paypal.com... and of course my info is auto logged in.. its MY computer.. and they sent themselves 1900 dollars... FROM MY OWN PC. i had 0 dollars to my name for 2 weeks bc of some asshole. IP lead to china... prob spoofed. Still have the log..
Sure, this is absolutely TeamViewer's fault. If it's Toyota's fault that someone speeding and otherwise driving recklessly gets killed in an accident, then it is certainly TeamViewer's fault for allowing a user to use a weak password.
Any product that is not 100% idiot proof is necessarily at-fault for any loss resulting therefrom. That's simple tort law 101. That's why product manufacturers get sued every time their product is used incorrectly and there is a resulting loss. Because the product does not prevent improper use that could lead to a loss, that loss becomes actionable.
Obviously, you're not working in I.T. support for a company with highly mobile workers who often need assistance in the form of a quick fix, no matter where they're located.
Windows "Safe Mode" can be useful for removing malware because it tells the OS to boot up in a "bare bones" mode, bypassing the startup registry keys or scripts it would usually run at boot time. This may be less true for Windows 10 or 8 than for 7 ... but it was definitely the case with 7 that malware removal tools couldn't completely delete some malware without first booting into safe mode. (Once the code was running, courtesy of getting launched by the normal boot processes that were skipped in safe mode, they kept themselves locked from deletion.)
It's not always a viable option to tell somebody who is half way around the world "Sorry, but you have to stop using your corporate-issued laptop now. Unhook it from the network immediately and send it back to us to remove the malware for you." They just want someone in I.T. to try to connect up and get it cleaned up so it functions properly again -- so they can do the business presentation they were scheduled to do or what-not.
If there are concerns it wasn't possible to get it 100% clean, it can be earmarked to re-image when it comes back.
"It is strange that this time around, just when TeamViewer servers go down, multiple users also flock to social media to complain about getting hacked."
No they didn't they went on social networks to complain. How about we just say they complained on the Internet and be done with it.
Social networks = a type of service over a network
Social media = content that is on that service
Do not get fooled by the outdated media corporations who are trying to turn any type of networking fad into something they are part of by naming everything their way.
The story has an update where Teamviewer states they suffered DOS attacks but no compromise. (Along with the ubiquitous 'users need to safeguard their credentials.')
Looks like someone gained access to my personal system via teamviewer around 3AM the last few nights...
They took my bitcoins :(