Post the Hacker attack...駭客入侵記

before I blog about the graduation, let me first talk about this serious incident which happened to my email account 2 days ago...

So around 6am on the 17th, i was woken up by a few text messages which totally annoyed me. When i checked it, a friend who I normally don't talk to asked me if i was in "Spain" because he had received an email about it. And he suggested that I take a look at my email. I then tried logging into it with my phone to no avail. THAT's when i realized that things were getting serious. I jumped out of bed and found out I was locked out of my own email account. And since I was using my sister's computer she left her email account open and I was able to see an email from 'myself' about having a relative in Spain who has a medical emergency for which I would need a large amount of money. I freaked out and realized that THIS email is actually being sent out to everyone on my gmail, the account which I've had for the past 9 years! If my not-so-good friend had received it, I was pretty darn sure the whole school had received it, let alone all of my previous housing/job contacts from my ucsd and usc years. I contacted gmail immediately through my backup email.

and my suspicion was confirmed.

for the next one hour i kept getting text messages about the email. When I finally showed up at school for the review session for the board i was stopped in the hall way many times, and people were asking me if i realized my email was being 'hacked'. some people actually got quite worried because they thought the email was quite convincing. Then during class one of the usc administrator actually walked in looking for me (in front of about 180 people). I had to leave the classroom to explain my situation. Apparently the email also contained my usc signature which made it a bigger deal than normal. He than promised that the tech support will look into it also.

Throughout the entire morning my phone kept ringing, from Baxter, from Berlitz (where i took my french), from school, and when i checked my email even some professors from usc and ucsd got back to me about the hacker attack, some offering tips on email password security. Luckily my gmail account was unlocked at that point so i was able to retrieve all of my contact information and wrote up another reminder to 'warn' people about it. that was 5 hrs post the hacker attack.

I guess at the end of the day, the really weird but sweet awakening is that, I can't believe how many people cared about me. And I dont mean this in a sarcastic or self-deprecating way. I mean really, usually I would think people are so immune to spams now they just hit 'delete' and move on. but i was getting texts/emails/phone calls from everybody, some people who i haven't talked to in years, about the spam. it was such a weird feeling because although the incident is sad and inconvenient (I lost all of my 1000+ archived emails), but the fact that people called and wrote to make sure i was okay, really made me feel warm and fuzzy on the inside. Could it be possible that people actually care about me more than I think they do? And I am saying this becuase oddly enough some of my 'closer' friends did not respond right away, but rather those who i've lost touch with for years, wether a old job contact/housing contact/old acquaintance, did so enthusiastically. It also made me wonder if unknowingly, i had the opportunity to touch this many people's lives, or at least left a slight mark, that made them feel the need to take time out of their busy day to reach out and warn me. some people were actually offering to help financially, and I had NO IDEA the impact would be so!

So I guess what I am trying to say is, although I was deeply bothered by the trouble i had to go through, including terminating everything, reformat my computer, canceling all email-forwarding, at the end of the day, i feel really good about reconnecting with some of the old friends who i used to have. I have chatted with people i've worked with during my Baxter days, ucsd professors, usc professors, NJ housing contacts who investigated for me, preceptor from Hawaii, and many more. I am not advocating that you send out a fake SPAM of course ;)....but I think it sort of helps me put things into perspective, that i should be extremely THANKFUL for all the love around me.

At the end of the day, I feel like everything is going to be O-K. :)