Did someone hack into my network?

Ataxrxes

I recently discovered some VERY disturbing things in the browser history of one of my computers. Is it possible for someone to get on a wireless network and go to websites using your browser to watch/look at stuff and have it look like it was done physically from the machine? The reason I ask is that the dates on the history could be when someone was watching the house, but I really don't want to believe that this person did this and I'm hoping that this proves to be the case. There was nothing strange on my other computer, just this one.

bowen

Not realistically, no.

They wouldn't be looking at porn either, they'd be after your bank account details.

JebusUD

Far more likely that you probably just don't know this house sitter as well as you think you do. Occam's Razor, right? Advanced hackers broke into your personal computer to look at goat porn or whatever VS. this guy who was at your house alone at the time looked up them goats.

Sir Carcass

Even if they hacked into your wifi to get online, the history wouldn't show up on one of your computers unless they directly took control of it. Seems like a lot of work to look at goat porn.

ArbitraryDescriptor

The timing makes it far more likely that this was not an external intruder attempting to set you up, or trying to browse disturbing things anonymously. If this were the case, it would have probably happened more frequently because they would have to have already put in the effort to get a backdoor into your machine, and they wouldn't likely leave you alone after one intrusion if mischief was their motive.

naporeon

Not to mention that someone capable of that level of access to your system would probably have thought to remove the browsing history.

And like some other folks have said, intruders would be after your financial information, not a safe place to look at porn.

AgentBryant

Overwhelmingly likely that whoever was watching the house did it. You should probably run some virus scans and whatnot, though, because who knows what the hell they picked up wherever they were browsing.

Essee

Yeah, as stated, people would not hack into your computer to use it to look at porn-- and if they did, they would definitely have CLEARED THEIR BROWSER HISTORY. I mean, c'mon, who looks at porn, especially at another person's house on another person's computer, and doesn't know they need to clear their history before they leave? Now, obviously the person probably shouldn't have done that at your house, but if they weren't looking at anything actually illegal (whether or not they're legally allowed to look at it due to age), I wouldn't freak about it too much. Just politely and firmly educate them in proper housesitting etiquette.

If they WERE looking at something illegal, and there aren't many things that COULD be in this category of media if you're an adult, then you've got a MUCH bigger problem on your hands.

Ataxrxes

Yeah, I didn't click on any of the links in the browser history because the titles of the videos, many of which were on Youtube btw looked VERY illegal. How is it possible that kind of stuff could be on Youtube? This is very disturbing. Don't ISP's track that kind of thing? I have not been contacted by anybody about it and the dates in the history are a few months old.

skeldare

Ataxrxes wrote:

Yeah, I didn't click on any of the links in the browser history because the titles of the videos, many of which were on Youtube btw looked VERY illegal. How is it possible that kind of stuff could be on Youtube? This is very disturbing. Don't ISP's track that kind of thing? I have not been contacted by anybody about it and the dates in the history are a few months old.

No ISP's don't track that type of thing.

tinwhiskers

Ataxrxes wrote:

Yeah, I didn't click on any of the links in the browser history because the titles of the videos, many of which were on Youtube btw looked VERY illegal. How is it possible that kind of stuff could be on Youtube? This is very disturbing. Don't ISP's track that kind of thing? I have not been contacted by anybody about it and the dates in the history are a few months old.

YouTube is pretty aggressive at taking down illegal( differentiating from copyrighted) content. That said "15 year old jail-bait dancing around in a thong" isn't actually illegal, since they aren't actually nude.

Also as I understand it (IANAL) viewing the illegal stuff isn't actually illegal because you don't "posses" or "distribute" it, Although temp files and caches and the like muddy that a bit.

skeldare

tinwhiskers wrote:

Ataxrxes wrote:

Yeah, I didn't click on any of the links in the browser history because the titles of the videos, many of which were on Youtube btw looked VERY illegal. How is it possible that kind of stuff could be on Youtube? This is very disturbing. Don't ISP's track that kind of thing? I have not been contacted by anybody about it and the dates in the history are a few months old.

YouTube is pretty aggressive at taking down illegal( differentiating from copyrighted) content. That said "15 year old jail-bait dancing around in a thong" isn't actually illegal, since they aren't actually nude.

Though they'll still most likely remove it or at least age restrict if it enough people report it.

Figgy

It doesn't sound like this is a simple matter of a house sitter looking at porn, judging by your reaction. If this is some serious stuff, have you considered contacting the police? I mean, what are we dealing with here? Child pornography? Bomb making?

Jimmy King

A lot of videos get put on youtube with titles that sounds like super hardcore porno or whatever just to get people to click on them and then they are either something totally tame or more of an ad for some porn site but not actually showing anything illegal or against the youtube tos, although still possibly not what you wanted someone to be doing with your computer. It's just to grab attention to get people to click.

Ataxrxes

What Figgy said, and not the bomb stuff. Like I said, I didn't click on any of the links to verify because the names were just too disturbing. If it was just regular ol' pr0n I wouldn't really have given a toss. I just really wanted there to be a way for this to not have been this person but it's now 99.9% that it was I would say.

MichaelLC

Ataxrxes wrote:

If it was just regular ol' pr0n I wouldn't really have given a toss.

I want to Awesome this, but I'm not sure that's appropriate.

I might consider a full format. Knowing this sitter was dumb enough not to clear the cache, who knows what they picked up. I'm basing this on assuming they were logged in as an Admin account?

Maguano

after reading these, it kinda makes me want to set up a "guest" or "baby-sitter" user id on my rig, as it sits in our living room...

JaysonFour

Ataxrxes wrote:

What Figgy said, and not the bomb stuff. Like I said, I didn't click on any of the links to verify because the names were just too disturbing. If it was just regular ol' pr0n I wouldn't really have given a toss. I just really wanted there to be a way for this to not have been this person but it's now 99.9% that it was I would say.

Honestly- if it were my PC, I'd nuke from orbit and reformat about four times, just to clear the "ew" factor out of it. I'd also invest in a new keyboard (Gods only know what they were doing while on the computer), and make sure I could prove I was out of town and that someone was housesitting if you get police knocking on your door. You never know what might happen, so better to be safe than sorry.

If this is as bad as you say it is, I'd also never, ever associate with this person ever again, if I could help it.

acidlacedpenguin

easy solution: get a blacklight, shine it on your computer area. That'll tell you if super-ultra-mega-hackers got your system or not. . .

edit: oh, it's great to be noticed!

THEPAIN73

Talk to the person and make them buy you a new mouse and keyboard.

Then find a way to not be around that person again.

You don't want to be involved in what they have going on. Especially with your computer.

Ego

JaysonFour wrote:

I'd nuke from orbit and reformat about four times [snip]. I'd also invest in a new keyboard (Gods only know what they were doing while on the computer), and make sure I could prove I was out of town and that someone was housesitting if you get police knocking on your door. You never know what might happen, so better to be safe than sorry.

This is good advice. No doubt the sitter would have deleted everything that they viewed but that still leaves recoverable remnants on a machine that police will be able to get at if they're looking.

Sorry to hear about what happened, it's always really unpleasant to accidentally learn something horrible about someone.

Tejs

Also, if that was your sitter, get a new one, like right now.

CP, from your babysitter? And they are alone with your children?

Figgy

Ego wrote:

JaysonFour wrote:

I'd nuke from orbit and reformat about four times [snip]. I'd also invest in a new keyboard (Gods only know what they were doing while on the computer), and make sure I could prove I was out of town and that someone was housesitting if you get police knocking on your door. You never know what might happen, so better to be safe than sorry.

This is good advice. No doubt the sitter would have deleted everything that they viewed but that still leaves recoverable remnants on a machine that police will be able to get at if they're looking.

Sorry to hear about what happened, it's always really unpleasant to accidentally learn something horrible about someone.

Huh? They didn't delete anything. They didn't even clear the browser history!

a5ehren

Tejs wrote:

Also, if that was your sitter, get a new one, like right now.

CP, from your babysitter? And they are alone with your children?

House-sitter, not child-sitter. But still.

Ataxrxes

Yeah house-sitter, and yes no more association which is too bad because I thought this was a friend. I guess you never really know someone as well as you think.