Hotmail Password Changed Scamming Mail Sent Malaysia

I've been working with our utility's general manager today after receiving an scam e-mail this morning. The e-mail synopsis is that he is stuck in Malaysia, needs money and send the the funds by western union. At first I thought that his computer had major problems and did a round with Free AVG and Spybot. Because he hadn't defragged in a while (months). These tools were as slow and ate up our time available today (5 1/2 hours worth). I realize that nothing showing up at this stage is not a concrete conculsion, but it was clean except for the cookies. We lost the internet connection and couldn't continue as in reading the malware removal post on this forum. What has me baffled is that his hotmail account password has been changed. There is no access to check out what confidential material has been compromised. Yes, he will be getting on an internal mail client to store the messages very soon. I also noted that for the past two or so years this scam message has been floating around the world from some web surfing. I have sent a report with full headers to the abuse folks at hotmail. Has anyone else had this problem? Aside from the full malware removal, does anything else restore the password? Or is this a case of SOL? Walter the baffled!!

 

Thank you for your reply. I turned my attention to the larger picture and issue which is the lack of a security breach protocol on the computer and system involved. I based the password section wording from a web site (I didn't pay close attention to the URL) which indicated that in the last two weeks this situation appeared in India. It must have been a hoax as well. I've never taken the time to fully learn and become certified in the security end of our computing world. So after speaking with our chairman and then our attorney, I did change my participation in this from in the trenches solution to suggest third party IT solutions for this event and recommend measures to prevent this in the future. Again, I really appreciate that you did reply, but I never should have written in the first place.
This forum is a great place to be. The info is really solid. Before I got serious about my home computer security, reformatting the hard drive was a quarterly event. That got old and I read the long tome on malware removal from stem to stern. I just couldn't find where I filed the hard copy or would have taken it with me on Saturday.It worked like a charm. After I did that the Free AVG and Spybot have become by best on-line friends. They interrupt at will and save my sorry hide every time.
Thank you again
Walter :-D

 

Chaslang;
The issue is resolved with the hotmail side. MSN is deleting hotmail accounts on a rolling basis since last year. I left the MS world of e-mail early last year for Thunderbird and had no idea the even WinMail was obsolete. So It was the general mangers time to go LIVE. He thought he had filled out the form/e-mail/link they sent him but wouldn’t swear to it. As I originally thought, leaving the computer on has nothing to do with his blackberry accepting messages. We’ve now found an IT person. I’m not to hot on him from previous experience. However he was available and did fix our immediate problems. In addition to the Free AVG and Spybot I added, he installed a firewall. He will also be adding a stick of RAM to speed the elder beast up rather than replacing the machine. It was difficult to work through a slow computer and I wasn’t worried about checking RAM or trying to disc cleanup and defrag. Frankly I had too close a relationship with the sensitive materials. It wasn’t what I wrote; it was the subject that I wrote about that concerned me. Also an upcoming utilities software upgrade will be including server based storage in the main office so the commission can lay its hands on the electronic files.
As best as we can tell, the spam related to Malaysia was a quick in and out job by the infiltrator and more than likely on hotmail’s end of the world. Most of the mail was rejected and returned by various spam software on the recipients computers. All the person was looking for was money. Needless to say, security has moved from the background to the forefront. Backing up work is now understood that it is required not an option. The right moment came where I could say I told you so. Even better, I am out of the picture as being the old broken record with that same old story.
I’ll bet your and my bottom dollar that I’ll read that link you posted. Thank you again for posting.
Walter:wave:wave