Hacked eBay accounts give rise to conspiracy theories
Published February 22nd, 2007
The Register - Eagle-eyed conspiracy buffs have pounced on a recent rash of compromised eBay user accounts as proof of a mile-wide hole in the auctioneer’s front lines, giving new life to a theory that could one day rival the intrigue surrounding Roswell UFO crashing and Kennedy assassinations.
Details remained sketchy, and of course, eBay managers have assembled the requisite wall of plausible deniability, but here’s what we’ve pieced together so far: Over the past few days, several dozen eBay auctions - many selling pricey items such as Cartier Tank watches - have been hijacked by crooks who append legitimate auctions with notes suggesting would-be buyers contact a Gmail account for a special, “buy-it-now” discount. (Our initial Google search, trolling for tell-tale signs of the scam, returned 73 results; those numbers thinned over the next several hours, presumably, as the tired souls in eBay’s security group pulled down offending pages.)
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