Auto-Forward…You’re Safe!

One of the most insidious hacks we’ve seen is the creation of an auto-forward rule in Outlook. Here is how it works.

A hacker guesses/cracks your email password. Instead of doing anything you will notice, the hacker creates an Outlook rule to forward everything that comes into your mailbox to an external account. Then he logs out and no one is the wiser.

You can change your password. You can turn on 2FA (two-factor authentication). He’s still going to get a copy of every email you receive. The hacker is now poised to follow-up with a subsequent attack on you or your firm for wire fraud or identity theft.

There’s hope! We have scanned every mailbox that we administer. We DID find some forwarding rules and deleted them after confirming with the mailbox owner that the rule was bogus. We have also changed the 365 server policies to prohibit any user from creating a “forward all rule” to an external recipient.

Rest easy. That hacker door has been closed.