Hacker Break eBay...

October 2007

A malicious hacker broke into an eBay Inc. server on Friday and temporarily suspended the accounts of a “very small” number of members, the company said. “We were able to block the fraudster quickly before any permanent damage had been done. At no point did the fraudster get any access to financial information or other sensitive information,” an eBay spokeswoman said. EBay has “secured and restored” the affected accounts and is calling the affected users, she said, without specifying how many accounts the hacker accessed and tinkered with. The perpetrator of that confidential data disclosure posted the names and contact information of 1,200 eBay members on the company’s Trust & Safety discussion forum, along with credit card numbers that were later determined to be invalid. EBay eventually concluded that the attacker obtained the information via a phishing scheme, tricking individual members into disclosing the data. Friday’s hack has quite a few eBay members rattled, judging by a long discussion forum thread about the incident. In that thread, some affected eBay members report receiving e-mails from a hacker identified as Vladuz saying that he had targeted them for posting forum comments that were critical of him. Vladuz has in the past reportedly stolen login information that has allowed him to post messages to eBay discussion forums as if he were an eBay employee.