SkyLounge, an online service for business travelers, says it has
resolved an attack on its servers that resulted in an unknown number of
users receiving messages purporting to be from the site.
The company’s founder believes the annoyance has resulted in him being “the most hated man in North America.”
A
Network World Canada reporter received messages from 16 people between
4:50 pm Monday and 9:08 am Tuesday asking to unsubscribe from an
unspecified service from Dover, Delaware-based SkyLounge. The reporter
was not CCd on the messages but was apparently part of an automated
mailing list. A colleague at IT World Canada described a similar
experience. Neither of the reporters had signed up asking to be on a
SkyLounge mailing list.
SkyLounge’s founder, Marcel van
Gemerden, said none of his members were affected and he believes a
hacker broke into his e-mail account.
“They broke into system,
they sent out a message to about 2,000 people and they uploaded a page
on to our server where they could remove themselves from the list,” Van
Gemerden said, adding it seems to have affected mainly journalists in
the U.S.
“So when people clicked on the link and went to the
page on our site, they put in their e-mail address and then
automatically, everybody that was on that list got a message from that
person saying ‘Remove me.’ So now you have all the journalists replying
to each other saying, ‘What do you mean remove me? I didn’t send you a
message at all.’ So they were having arguments between them and we’re
getting 70 calls per hour and a whole lot of e-mails.”
Van
Gemerden said SkyLounge has removed the server that allows members to
send messages to each other. He added during the last five days,
SkyLounge staff noticed unusual activity from “IP addresses that did
not make sense.” Then the internal email stopped working and he was
prompted to re-enter his password.
“I think they broke into my personal email address,” he said. “They found the code somewhere.”
SkyLounge’s
describes itself as a “network that connects business travelers” and
includes information on flights and destinations.
Van Gemerden
said none of SkyLounge’s members were affected but he does not know who
received the
original message from the hackers.
“We’re trying to retrieve it and see (to whom it) was sent and find out if we can send out an apology e-mail afterwards.”
He added he believes he is “the most hated man in North America right now.”
