GoToMyPC Attacked by Hackers, Forcing Service to Reset User Passwords

GoToMyPC is an ingenious service that enables computer users to gain remote access to their home or work computers through specialized desktop or mobile apps. The use of GoToMyPC has raised many security questions that have fortunately been answered by many security measures put in place to thwart attacks. However, hackers have initiated a sophisticated password attack that may have compromised many user passwords for the remote service forcing the company behind GoToMyPC to reset user passwords.

The impact of a data breach of the GoToMyPC service could apparently lead to allowing hackers and outsiders to gain unadulterated access to computer's using the ingenious service. Though, the purpose of the recent attack to gather passwords to the GoToMyPC service is suspecting to be one that sells off the data to other hackers so they may access other online accounts. While GoToMyPC has been a convenience and essential business tool for many across the globe, the recent attack has compromised password credentials in hopes that hackers can use those passwords to infiltrate other accounts belonging to GoToMyPC users. Fundamentally, GoToMyPC passwords could be used to access email accounts or banking accounts, which are usually sold over the Dark Web to the highest bidders.

The breach of GoToMyPC passwords is suspected to be an ATO (account takeover) attack, one where cybercrooks test various username and password combinations in hopes that users reused passwords across other online services. ATO attacks are rather common and most often result in sell-offs of massive amounts of data compromised from a vulnerable service.

In the case of GoToMyPC being attacked for its user passwords, the attack prompted the company releasing details to its users on how to reset passwords. After the attack was verified as being highly sophisticated and may resulted in theft of user login data, GoToMyPC then forced users to reset passwords to help prevent any backlash of attackers using the credentials to access accounts. Because GoToMyPC is a service that offers remote access to computers, an infiltration of login credentials would undermine the services' existence in providing a secure method to access other computers remotely.

Data breaches over the course of the past year have been made worse by the very fact that attackers are dumping their compromised data over the Internet. Much of the compromised user data, accounting for billions of user accounts, is either shared over the Internet through Dark Web portals or sold off to other hackers who may later utilize the data to access other accounts. Though much of the compromised data spilled over the Internet is in some form of decoded text, crooks are known to crack the data and further exploit user credentials.

Services like GoToMyPC are inclined to beef up their security measures in situations like the recent data breach of their passwords. Still, attackers will continue to utilize methods like ATO attacks to infiltrate services, which they have been successful in doing against companies like LinkedIn, MySpace, VerticalScope, Tumblr, and many others.