Project Reality Forums

Hey there. I have of course already sent an email to the support team of xfire, but with the recent change of owners and developers, I doubt I'll get an answer too soon.

Anyway, something very weird happened today. When I came online around 14-15:00 CET, a friend of mine greeted me and asked me to identify myself. After I did, he told me that he saw my name online earlier that day, when he thought I'd actually should not have been at home. Which, of course, was the case. So, someone using my nick name was online today around 10:00, before I got home, for around 15 minutes my friend says. That person didn't do anything but being online, and my friend did not talk to him or check what account name he had, thinking it must be me being online at an odd time.

Now, I ran a full malware check of course, using the current version of avast!, and in safe mode (Win7). No results.

Next thing I did was changing all my passwords.

Still - even though I did the mistake of using the same password for my xfire account and some forums, I never told anyone the password, so the only way someone could've obtained it would be by either getting access to the databases of one of these forums or by directly hacking my account.

However, nothing was done by that person while he was online as far as I know. No friend complained about me spamming or anything. And my password wasn't changed, I could log in without problems.

So at first I thought it must've been someone else simply changing his nick name to look like mine. However, noone with such a nick name is in the friends offline friend list, and the activity report of xfire shows no signs of a name change.

I asked xfire to confirm whether or not I was online today at 10:00 CET, but I doubt they'll answer.

So... I'm very confused at the moment. I have no idea how that could have happened. Maybe it is in fact malware on my computer, though, I would've expected malware to actually do more than just logging on and then off again without spamming messages or doing anything else. Also, I hear avast should be a rather good scanner, and it found nothing. I visit no websites that I do not trust, I open no emails that I didn't expect, accept no files, I often run virus checks...

Any idea what it could've been? Is that friend just seeing things? (Though he says he is sure that he saw me online, and I've known him for years and trust him, he's not the sort of guy that'd be trolling like that)

I kinda guess changing my password isn't a suitable solution. Since I don't know what it is, I don't know if I fixed it already or if it still is a problem. I'd rather not create a new profile, but if I have to, I'll do it of course.

So, since you guys are all smart and stuff, any ideas? Any possible leak I didn't think of?

(No, I am not visiting any illegal sites, not downloading anything that doesn't come from trusted sources, not opening strange looking links etc.)

Spec_Operator wrote:Hey there. I have of course already sent an email to the support team of xfire, but with the recent change of owners and developers, I doubt I'll get an answer too soon.

Anyway, something very weird happened today. When I came online around 14-15:00 CET, a friend of mine greeted me and asked me to identify myself. After I did, he told me that he saw my name online earlier that day, when he thought I'd actually should not have been at home. Which, of course, was the case. So, someone using my nick name was online today around 10:00, before I got home, for around 15 minutes my friend says. That person didn't do anything but being online, and my friend did not talk to him or check what account name he had, thinking it must be me being online at an odd time.

Now, I ran a full malware check of course, using the current version of avast!, and in safe mode (Win7). No results.

Next thing I did was changing all my passwords.

Still - even though I did the mistake of using the same password for my xfire account and some forums, I never told anyone the password, so the only way someone could've obtained it would be by either getting access to the databases of one of these forums or by directly hacking my account.

However, nothing was done by that person while he was online as far as I know. No friend complained about me spamming or anything. And my password wasn't changed, I could log in without problems.

So at first I thought it must've been someone else simply changing his nick name to look like mine. However, noone with such a nick name is in the friends offline friend list, and the activity report of xfire shows no signs of a name change.

I asked xfire to confirm whether or not I was online today at 10:00 CET, but I doubt they'll answer.

So... I'm very confused at the moment. I have no idea how that could have happened. Maybe it is in fact malware on my computer, though, I would've expected malware to actually do more than just logging on and then off again without spamming messages or doing anything else. Also, I hear avast should be a rather good scanner, and it found nothing. I visit no websites that I do not trust, I open no emails that I didn't expect, accept no files, I often run virus checks...

Any idea what it could've been? Is that friend just seeing things? (Though he says he is sure that he saw me online, and I've known him for years and trust him, he's not the sort of guy that'd be trolling like that)

I kinda guess changing my password isn't a suitable solution. Since I don't know what it is, I don't know if I fixed it already or if it still is a problem. I'd rather not create a new profile, but if I have to, I'll do it of course.

So, since you guys are all smart and stuff, any ideas? Any possible leak I didn't think of?

(No, I am not visiting any illegal sites, not downloading anything that doesn't come from trusted sources, not opening strange looking links etc.)

Might be trolling you.
Or maybe a Ninja came into your house and messed around with your computer

I do not believe he is trolling, really. I'm gonna assume it was some sort of bug on xfire's side then, or that he was actually just seeing ghosts. If it was something else... I just did a boot-time scan and am absolutely free of any malware. All passwords changed. That should do... I hope.

Still, I'd like to know what it was...

Spec_Operator wrote:I do not believe he is trolling, really. I'm gonna assume it was some sort of bug on xfire's side then, or that he was actually just seeing ghosts. If it was something else... I just did a boot-time scan and am absolutely free of any malware. All passwords changed. That should do... I hope.

Still, I'd like to know what it was...

Weird stuff eh?

Very. I'd be happy to hear any other ideas, still. It just feels like I'm forgetting something...

Did you check if your email account (which is connected with xfire) has anything wierd going on?
Else maybe your PC was used at that time. Sometimes one of my older PCs will start on its own because of fluctuations in the powerline (i.e. i turn on some electric appliance). How it turned itself off i have no explaination though.

It is possible to remotely wake your PC using "Wake on LAN" however the hacker would have to somehow pretend he is in your LAN (i.e. by using VPN) if you are using some kind of VPN (for road warriors), it might have been cracked.

As far as virtual LAN goes, I'm using hamachi for playing with friends often, and it's on auto-start.

But I know noone who would have even the slightest reason to take great efforts to hack my computer or anything. Nothing of value on here, and I don't think anyone would want to cause serious damage to me for personal reasons.

Also, the PC is password protected, so even if someone turned it on, or it somehow started on it's own, it should've been stuck on the log-in screen. Xfire isn't on autostart, either.

I did check my email account. In fact, I contacted the xfire support team through it, of course without response so far.