Hotmail can't be "hacked". In fact, most things can't be hacked. There is no magic number that will let a person into your Hotmail, or into your bank, or into your Gmail account. However, Hotmail users *can* be socially engineered. That means that someone befriends you, and they somehow trick you into giving them your account. Think back -- have you run any MSN scripts lately without checking them? Have you ever run anything that people send you through IM? Have you told anyone the name of your dog? If you think you might have told someone something personally identifiable (for example, your secret answer), you were probably socially engineered.
There is also the possibility you were brute forced, but that is *really* unlikely unless you picked a really easy dictionary word as your password. MSN locks you out after a few tries, so brute forcing is not that effective. If, in fact, you were brute forced, you *really* need to come up with a better password. Think of a bunch of letters and numbers that have some significance, but don't spell anything. Being as I administer a few subnetworks, I picked a 25 letter Windows serial I memorized (from installing Windows on many computers). I've never seen anyone guess a Windows serial number, so I figured it'd be as good a password as any. You should do something similar. Like, if your mom's name is Annie, your dog's name is Charlie, and your dad's name is Bob, a good hard-to-bruteforce password would be ann13ch4rl13b0bx1. Nobody will guess that. Always remember to add a few letters that aren't in anyone's name, so people don't just leet-text some names. A good "normal security" password based off of that one long one would be ann13ch. Again, hard to guess.
As for getting the account back, contact MSN support, and wait patiently. Hope I'm being some help though.
Edited Sep 25, 2004 7:17 PM by Ziggy
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