3/11/2011 E-mail hacking

EMail Hacking

All email communications on the internet are possible by two protocols:
1) Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP port-25)
2) Post Office Protocol (POP port-110)

E-Mail hacking consists of various techniques as discussed below.

1) EMail Tracing :- Generally, the path taken by an email while travelling from sender to receiver can be explained by following diagram.

The most effective and easiest way to trace an email is to analyze it's email headers. This can be done by just viewing the full header of received email. A typical email header looks something like this:

From Barr Thu Jan 3 05:33:26 2008 X-Apparently-To: prasannasherekar@yahoo.co.in via 203.104.16.34; Thu, 03 Jan 2008 05:25:38 +0530 X-YahooFilteredBulk: 189.160.34.89 X-Originating-IP: [189.160.34.89] Return-Path: <atiles@destatis.de> Authentication-Results: mta113.mail.in.yahoo.com from=destatis.de; domainkeys=neutral (no sig) Received: from 189.160.34.89 (HELO dsl-189-160-34-89.prod-infinitum.com.mx) (189.160.34.89) by mta113.mail.in.yahoo.com with SMTP; Thu, 03 Jan 2008 05:25:38 +0530 Received: from dvapa ([141.203.33.92]) by dsl-189-160-34-89.prod-infinitum.com.mx with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.0); Wed, 2 Jan 2008 18:03:26 -0600 Message-ID: <477C264E.3000604@destatis.de> Date: Wed, 2 Jan 2008 18:03:26 -0600 From: "Barr" <atiles@destatis.de> Add to Address Book User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.6 (Windows/20070728) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: prasannasherekar@yahoo.co.in Subject: angel rubberneck Content-Type: multipart/related; boundary="------------030604060204000701040304" Content-Length: 16433

The above email header gives us the following information about it's origin and path:

a) Sender's email address :- atiles@destatis.de

b) Source IP address :- 141.203.33.92

c) Source mail server :- dsl-189-160-34-89.prod-infinitum.com.mx

d) Email client :- Thunderbird 2.0.0.6

There are lots of ready-made tools available on the internet which performs email tracing very effectively and shows exact geographical location for email sender on the world map.

Recommended   Tools
NeoTrace	http://www.neotrace.com
VisualRoute	http://visualroute.visualware.com
E-MailTracker	http://www.visualware.com

Hacker claims credit for knocking church's site offline

Twitter post suggests 'The Jester' may have been responsible for knocking controversial church offline

Computerworld - A Twitter message from Monday suggests that a seld-proclaimed "hacktivist" using the handle The Jester may have been responsible for knocking the controversial Westboro Baptist Church offline.

In the message, the hacker claimed to have temporarily taken down the public website of the church "for celebrating the death of U.S. troops."
The message, however, made no direct mention if The Jester (@th3j35t3r on Twitter) was also responsible for the unavailability today of several other websites affiliated to the WBC.
Members of the WBC church, based in Topeka, Kan., are known for their strident anti-gay views and for protests at funerals of slain military personnel and others.
Last week, someone purporting to be from the hacking collective known as Anonymous, posted a letter on an Anonymous site, warning WBC members of attacks against their church public websites if they did not stop their protests.
The letter lamented the "inimitable bigotry and intolerant fanaticism" of the protesters and warned of online attacks that the church would not be able to withstand or recover from.
That letter was later dismissed as a hoax by Anonymous, which has been involved in several high-profile attacks recently, including one against the security firm HBGary.
Shirley Phelps-Roper of the Westboro Church today said such attacks are not unusual for the church.
"Every time we look up somebody is doing something to us," she said claiming that in the past the church's website has been attacked by hackers not just from the U.S. but also from other countries such as the Netherlands and New Zealand. "All such attacks do is to cause somebody to look at us," she said.
She attributed the latest attack on the military but offered no explanation for her claim.
This morning, all of the church's sites were unavailable. It is not immediately clear how long the sites have been down and what role, if any, The Jester or Anonymous may have played. There has been no response yet to a Computerworld request for comment from Anonymous members.
The Jester, previously claimed responsibility for launching distributed denial of service attacks against WikiLeaks last year in response to what it claimed was WikiLeaks' role in endangering the lives of U.S. troops.