AOL... To Hackers
posted 21st June 2000

The biggest internet company in the world, America Online, has been hit by hackers. The company said hackers had gained access to a number of member accounts through a virus attached to e-mails. The attack was similar to the ILOVEYOU virus that temporarily paralysed millions of computers last month, though on a far smaller scale. This latest security breach highlights the vulnerability of even the world's large internet services provider to the threat of hacker attacks. "A small number of member accounts may have been illegally viewed," admitted America Online spokesman Rich D'Amato. "We are aware of claims that a small number of member accounts were illegally accessed. We take these claims seriously," he said.

The people behind the attack targeted AOL customer service representatives with e-mails containing a virus attachment. When opened, it created a connection to the sender's computer and allowed access to some AOL accounts, including the customer's name, address and credit card details. AOL has minimised the impact of the security breach, stressing the hackers did not appear to have gained access to AOL's database of 23 million members. "We will continue to investigate these claims and will turn over what we learn to law enforcement authorities," said Mr D'Amato. "We will take any and all opportunities to prosecute these hackers," he said. Really, to be safe at the moment, users need to scan their emails before they download them onto their own machine. This can only realistically be done using the ISPs web-mail interface, email using a web browser. Of course the ISP has to have such a system in place. Any email that has an attachment which the user is not expecting should be deleted and any other email where the source of email is not known, same.