More security compromise

After a nice lie in and breakfast, Clare and I both went to our computers to check email and found we had difficulty getting on-line. Then she succeeded, but my problem persisted, so I went through an equipment fault finding check, to no avail. When I attempted to access our router to check the settings, my access password was refused. Thinking it might be a hardware fault, I rebooted. Same result. Then I visited each of the computers in the house in turn, and discovered none of them could access the router using neither this password nor the original default setting. Switching router on and off made no difference. 

The only conclusion I could come to was that the password had been changed overnight from outside, as  the router had been left on. In other words, I'd been hacked. Uh oh? Any relation to my sister's scam, as my Gmail address was on her computer, with my warning message emailed during the event. Maybe that enabled someone to track my IP address and start an attack on me.

Thankfully, I have a spare router at home set up for my account, and another spare in the CBS office. I switched them over and changed the access password, making it harder to break, plus the wireless access password. That'll do for now, hopefully. But what of my sister? I phoned her and told her to call Talktalk Care to tell them that she believed her router security had been compromised. Later she rang back to say she had spoken to someone who when she said this replied: "Compromise, what is compromise?" Neither a first language English speaker nor trained in security jargon, it seems. She couldn't make herself understood and rang off in disgust. It means her computer is still potentially vulnerable, until her router cannot be accessed and its password changed. I should have checked it !

It took me three hours to go through all the internet enabled devices in the house registering password changes in all of them, just in case, well, ten out of eleven so far, there's still Clare's Kindle to do. Rather later than expected, I went into town, temporarily quiet because the Wales Ireland rugby match was in full swing. I watched the miserable Welsh defeat up on the top floor of John Lewis, where I met up with Ashley before we went to the CBS office to finish off what we didn't get done yesterday. It was seven o'clock by the time I left, and made my way to the bus through heaving crowds eating or queuing for fast food in scores, blocking Caroline Street with bodies and litter. Not an endearing sight. What slobs we are with our unhealthy public eating habits.

A strange unsettling day.