On Jan 20th people came to work and shortly found out
that they could not receive email. They COULD send email and surf
the web. I'm the "psuedo" IT guy here and I wasn't in the office. So someone called our computer/IT service dealer to check it out. He wasn't able to log on to our Netopia(R7200) router which led him to believe that the login and password had been changed by me. I didn't change it. As a temporary work around we set up some people with a yahoo mail account and had it pull mail from our pop address. To our amazement, one user, who typically gets about 25 emails a day, got about 500, and then 1000 the next day. Our DSL provider was telling us that without the log in and password we would have to buy a new router. Then on thurday evening, I came into the office and all of the sudden I could get email. The next day, everyone else was getting their mail. And, the user that was getting 500 to 1000 mails, after a couple of days, told me that his incoming email had tapered down to it's normal volume.
I think we were hacked from the outside. I suspect someone logged in to our router with the default login and password and changed the settings(I understand that there is a setting the won't allow incoming email). I'm not sure how to relate it to the flood of emails the one guy was getting, but I think it is related.
Does anyone have comments? Agree or disagree?
Also, since then, I found that it is quite simple to restore the Netopia to original factory settings. I'm quite upset with our DSL provider for telling us we needed a new one.
One more thing, every now and again, I have to power down the router because we lose DSL access. When I power it up again, we regain access. Our provider can't figure out what the problem is. Suggestions?
Thank you to everyone who had the patience to read this long winded post.
that they could not receive email. They COULD send email and surf
the web. I'm the "psuedo" IT guy here and I wasn't in the office. So someone called our computer/IT service dealer to check it out. He wasn't able to log on to our Netopia(R7200) router which led him to believe that the login and password had been changed by me. I didn't change it. As a temporary work around we set up some people with a yahoo mail account and had it pull mail from our pop address. To our amazement, one user, who typically gets about 25 emails a day, got about 500, and then 1000 the next day. Our DSL provider was telling us that without the log in and password we would have to buy a new router. Then on thurday evening, I came into the office and all of the sudden I could get email. The next day, everyone else was getting their mail. And, the user that was getting 500 to 1000 mails, after a couple of days, told me that his incoming email had tapered down to it's normal volume.
I think we were hacked from the outside. I suspect someone logged in to our router with the default login and password and changed the settings(I understand that there is a setting the won't allow incoming email). I'm not sure how to relate it to the flood of emails the one guy was getting, but I think it is related.
Does anyone have comments? Agree or disagree?
Also, since then, I found that it is quite simple to restore the Netopia to original factory settings. I'm quite upset with our DSL provider for telling us we needed a new one.
One more thing, every now and again, I have to power down the router because we lose DSL access. When I power it up again, we regain access. Our provider can't figure out what the problem is. Suggestions?
Thank you to everyone who had the patience to read this long winded post.