10 Signs You Might be Hacked and Not Even Know It

As October is Cyber Security Awareness Month, I wanted to highlight this article by Lorna Hutcheson on the top 10 signs you might be hacked (and not even know about it).  Most company networks and Web applications are under attack without anyone knowing about it for years such as the infamous TJ Maxx breach. 

Why do hackers remain silent rather than promoting their conquests and attacks to the world like they used to 10 years ago?  Very simple:  money.  Hackers can make millions of dollars with their expertise and they’d rather cash in on the big dollars rather than gain the notoriety and peer recognition. 

So what are some of the signs you might be compromised?  The following can be big clues if gone unchecked:     

1. Your logging server hasn't logged any events or you haven't received alerts in the last 12 hours 
2. Your FTP server/user hard drives etc. are suddenly out of disk space or maybe logs increase in size more than your normal variation 
3. Your competition's products looks just like yours, but have a prettier color scheme 
4. Your customers start receiving spam on email addresses they used only to sign up for your service 
5. You get machine acts "funny" report from users (i.e. windows closing by themselves, browser homepage changed, etc.) 
6. Someone needs help connecting to the company's wireless access point, you don't have a wireless access point 
7. Complaints that software (payment processing software, Web browser, etc) keeps crashing 
8. Complaints from user(s) that passwords/logins aren't working 
9. Computer systems running unusually slow 
10. Visitors to your Website complain that they get redirected to another site or one that just doesn't "look" right

by
Erin Swanson
ESwanson@cenzic.com