Fyi, Im not comp savvy. I play alot of online poker. Last night after playing I logged my balance as I always do (over $3500.00). Today I get home from work, log on to this particular site (which is one of the big ones) and BAM, my balance is $0. I call the sites security and am told the money was played and lost from my Ip address. I tell the guy my home was secure and something is wrong b/c my comp was not used all day. Im thinking I must have been hacked somehow. He tells me no, your comp was used. I have a router that is password protected so I dont know what the hell is going on. How can I investigate? The one thing I know is nobody broke into my house, passed on some nice things just to play some poker and locked the door behind them on the way out. If anyone is in the industry and in Atlanta maybe I could use your services to further avoid problem. Thanks
Do you have wireless internet at home? If your router is unsecured, or you are using WEP encryption (heck even WPA isn't great), it's pretty easy for people to hack into your wireless and use your connection even from miles away with the right equipment. Anything they did would appear to come from your IP address. Also, if you're doing anything involving money over wireless, you should think twice. Request their logs demonstrating that your account was played from your IP address.
I do have wireless that is password protected. Comcast told me that my ip is different every time on turn on laptop. I have been advised that the mac # is always the same. If someone hacked my router would there mac# be the same as mine?
First, are we talking wireless router or some sort of cellular or wide area wireless? Unless the software on the laptop is communicating with the router with strong encryption (probably not if it's through IE, Firefox, etc.), wireless should only be used in low-risk activities. MAC ADDR can be spoofed by a hacker, but it takes sophistication beyond some punk hacker in your neighborhood. If it's different, it would be good evidence that it wasn't done from your computer. Request the logs from the poker company. They should have records of what happened and when. Comcast should also have logs of who had the IP at that same time... Make sure you change your password to something ridiculously complex. 12 characters with upper, lower and numerical characters. Good luck.
This is an absolutely true statement for anything sold to the public. It is not a complex matter to construct a NIC with a flashable EPROM that can have a custom MAC ADDR. They monitor your wireless packets, decode the encryption, determine MAC and then viola... they program their custom NIC to the same MAC.
