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Thursday 20 June 2013

Moniker "Security Notice: Service-wide Password Reset" mail and t.lt02.net

This email from Moniker shows an impressive combination of WIN and FAIL at the same time.

www.moniker.com    

Moniker

Moniker’s Operations & Security team has discovered and blocked suspicious activity on the Moniker network that appears to have been a coordinated attempt to access a number of Moniker user accounts.

As a precaution to protect your domains, we have decided to implement a system-wide password reset. Please read the below instructions to create a new password. You will not be able to access your Moniker account until these steps are taken.

In our security investigation, we have found no evidence that domains have been lost or transferred out. We also have no evidence that any confidential or credit card information has been compromised.

While our password encryption measures are robust, we are taking additional steps to ensure that your personal data and domains remain secure. This means that, to be absolutely sure of the security of your account, we are requiring all users to reset their Moniker account passwords.
Please reset your password by following the directions below.

1) Go to Moniker.com and click the “Sign In” button in the upper right hand corner of the home page. Select the “Forgot Your Password” link.


2) You will be directed to a page to “Retrieve” your Moniker Account Password. When prompted, enter your account number and click “Submit”.


3) You will be directed to a page that displays the message below. You will receive an email from Moniker. Please follow the instructions in this email to complete the password reset.

As recent events with other large services have demonstrated, this type of activity is becoming more common. We take our responsibility to keep your domains and personal data safe very seriously, and we're constantly enhancing the security of our service infrastructure to protect our customers. We feel it is also important to be clear that we view this as attempted illegal activity and have taken steps to report this to the appropriate authorities.

There are also several important steps that you can take to ensure that your data on any website, including Moniker, is secure:
•    Avoid using simple passwords based on dictionary words
•    Never use the same password on multiple sites or services
•    Never click on 'reset password' requests in emails that you did not request

Thank you for taking the time to read this email. We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience of having to change your password, but, ultimately, we believe this simple step will result in a more secure experience. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact Moniker Support. Our support team is standing by to assist at 800-688-6311 or outside the U.S. and Canada: 954-607-1294.

Drake Harvey
Chief Operations Officer
Moniker.com

Moniker
1800 SW 1st Ave, Suite 440, Portland, OR, USA
Sales and Support: +1 (800) 688-6311
www.moniker.com
   
Copyright © 2013 Moniker.com | SnapNames. 

Full disclosure and prompt action is a WIN. Shit happens, it's often how you deal with it that makes the difference. But wait.. where does the link in the email go to? t.lt02.net? Who the heck are they? And this is where a big dose of FAIL happens.

lt02.net belongs to a company called VertexInternet (vertex.net). This company is not related to Moniker, and bearing in mind that this email is about a potential security breach you might expect people to be a little bit cautious about clicking through those links.

To be fair, the body of the email does suggest going to "moniker.com" (i.e. typing it in the address bar). The mystery of lt02.net is easily explainable too.. VertexInternet run an email marketing system called Listrak which is what is being used to send out the email. The email is legitimate, and presumably it has been done this way for reasons of speed.. the problem is that many people will probably be highly suspicious of this email given the context and that this approach is often used by the Bad Guys.

If you are going to send out a message like this, make sure that all the links go to a site that the recipient would recognise. In this case the sensible option would be to link directly to moniker.com. I'm betting that quite a few people will ignore this message and then wonder why they cannot log into their accounts at a later date.

1 comment:

Onlinemarketinggenie.com said...

Moniker Website has been down
for days now. Any word?