Milady-- very glad to see you have recouped your own FT identity. I trust Dan and the other IT folks at Webflyer have taken a look at all this activity and are going to do something about it...?

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Gaucho100K

I am certain FewMiles that you know a great deal more about hacking than I, although I don't imagine that today is a particularly good day to call attention to one's technical expertise on FT. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/wink.gif

When it was just Gaucho and Punki that were compromised, I too suspected that the leak may have been connected with MM, but when fake handle (which was exclusive to FT) was stolen, it became obvious that there was something else going on.

Obviously, some unhappy soul has something they are trying to prove.

I can also confirm having been on the receiving end of inside information from a variety of sources. Some directly from Insiders, other fowarded by third parties. Please dont ask me to reveal the source(s) though.



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Gaucho100K

You didn't use the same password, did you http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/confused.gif?

No, jfe, the password for fake handle was different, used no where but on FT and only a few hours old.

I wondered the same.

How do we know this is the real Punki anyway?

FewMiles..

Well, then this is getting weirder by the minute.

I hope we hear from Randy soon, and see if he can figure out what the heck is going on.

Again, the thing that puzzles me is that the accounts of only two members were "played" with. If a 'black hat' had access to the entire account database, I'd have thought that they would have wreaked a lot more havoc.

It seems to me that the priority for this hacker was to expose private discussions from the TT and TB forums. The playing of other peoples account is/was apparently a second priority.

Seems plausible seeing that the TalkTeam forum is gone completely and all the threads in the TalkBoard forum are not accessible.

I could see trying to get access using Gaucho100K's info since he was most recently elected to the TalkBoard, but why Punki's. She hasn't been on TalkBoard for a while now. Weird.

Sincerely,

William R. Sanders
Customer Service Coordinator
Starwood Preferred Services

[email protected]

I think the expose of the discussions was a means, not an end. I strongly believe that the purpose was to disrupt FT by sowing ill feelings among the members and creating distrust of the security.

This disruption is the only thing that all the hoaxter's actions have in common.

As I said earlier, I believe the same person was playing all the roles. He first came here as ftomnibox and made a ridiculous accusation that I am a racist. I am certain that he was hoping I would accuse some person I have debated with on Omni as being "ftomnibox" and must have been disappointed when I didn't.

His next appearance was as TalkTeam and Enquiring Mind. Here, he not only made the revelations but did his best to impersonate OzStamps in his writing style. He had some small measure of success -- both the mods who were quoted and the people they had talked about were upset. Also, some members did think it was Oz.

He then assumed the identity of concienceofflyertalk and accused both Oz and myself of being behind the whole thing.

Obviously feeling that he had gone as far as he could in creating ill will, he then made an obscene post, using Gaucho100K's name, attacking Oz and Randy. He must have known that Gaucho would soon discredit the post but that by doing it he would be demonstrating that the board (and possibly its complete data base) could be hacked.

To further prove his point, he assumed Punki's identity and posted something which she could not possibly have written.

Gaucho, Oz, Punki, the moderators, those people who were discussed by the mods, and I have very little in common. I don't believe anybody has a grudge against each and every one of us.

The target was FlyerTalk and only FlyerTalk. It was a direct strike at Randy's business and, if I were him, I would take the action that an Assistant U.S. Attorney suggested on another thread and ask the FBI to investigate.

So where's Glen's tag line re:bubbly? Didn't we catch Gaucho's doppleganger because he forgot the tag line?

We're all stuck in the Matrix - what we need now is Agent Smith to come out of the woodwork...

I'd rather believe this has been the work of a sicko (or sickos) who is crying for attention, instead of some conspiracy theory of cyberterrorism. The more we join in comments, the more "they" are getting the attention they crave. I still think the best that we can do is to ignore the hackers, multiple personalities, and fire starters. Safeguard our own passwords. Let Randy and his staff monitor and trace from the technical side. Hey, even the movie cops traced and found the Academy member who leaked the screener mvoies. This too will be resolved.

There is no evidence that the member files on FlyerTalk have been compromised.

If the member files had been compromised by a hacker I would expect to see much wider disruptions then we have seen so far.

I completely agree.

For the "leak" I envision two scenarios:

The perp had a few threads from the TalkTeam forum that were specifically leaked to him/her by a disgruntled moderator.

or

The perp had got access to the forum by using someone else's id/password. They gained access to someone else's password via the same means as they accessed your and Punkis account.

As I've said all along, had they compromised board security, you'd have seen much more than 2 or 3 accounts used.



[This message has been edited by skofarrell (edited Feb 02, 2004).]