Topic: detecting hacking

[Clark Kent]

I have a coworker who thinks that her Office programs, perhaps MS communicator may be being monitored by a coworker (all aprties here would be non IT and not authorized for such activity).  Is there anyone could tell e how to tell if Outlook or communicator are being messed with remotely by an unauthorized party?

[Just plain old Punisher]

Depends, there are programs that can be installed to monitor that sort of thing. Try pressing ctrl-alt-del and check the processes for anything you aren't familiar with.

just type the running file name in a google search and you'll see the results whether or not the running program is a needed system file or whether it could be a program that's running to monitor her email/chat activity. Some of them like explorer.exe or system are obvious windows files so they don't need to be checked.

You really should have your friend contact IT and have them run a port scan on the computer in question to determine if there are any unauthorized programs comunicating with a outside party....or with another computer on the corporate LAN.

[The Bar-Abbas Anomaly]

 
There's a freeware program called 'Active Ports' that will easily show you what network connections are coming in to or going out from your computer.  It's not real complex and should be easily figured out by anyone who doesn't classify themselves as a complete computer dummy...

(Note - Symantec Anti-Virus sometimes detects this file as a virus or hacking tool or something...  Don't worry about it.  It safe)

[Darth Sidious]

netstat.

Research