JGSGB-Announce Mailing List: Cause of Spam Message Elucidated

[JGSGB Announcements List (jgsgb-announce]

  I wanted to report that we are quite sure that we have determined how the spam message was able to go out over the JGSGB-Announce list on Friday.

As I suspected originally, the email list itself was not hacked, and the addresses of list subscribers were not compromised. This was confirmed by our hosting service, which had more detailed information on the origin of the spam message that went out over the list.

The problem originated with the compromise of the email account of a JGSGB leader with authority to post to the Announce list. As soon as I suspected that cause, I disabled posting from that account, and no further problems occurred.

As a warning to others, we strongly suspect that the email account was compromised as a result of the owner's logging into it over a public WiFi network. One piece of evidence for this is that the email addresses to which spam messages were sent (including the Announce list) were all in the person's limited online address book; other addresses in the Outlook address book on the person's computer did not receive spam.

The compromised email account has been re-secured by changing the password. However, to make sure that the hacker remains unable to send spam to this list, I will continue to block posting to the list from that account.

Some list subscribers wrote to me that they were the cause of the problem (because their email accounts had been compromised). They may have been the source of spam messages, but not of the spam message that went out over the JGSGB list. Only someone with posting authority could do that. But their responses show that compromised email accounts have been a significant problem.

We apologize for any concerns caused by the spam message, and we hope that operation of our list can now return to normal.

Jay Sage
Electronic Services Chair
Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Boston (JGSGB)
web:    http://jgsgb.org
email:    email [at] jgsgb.org

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