Goal of The Weather Report e-Mail Hack?

[mbrmbrg]

Hey, a month or two ago, my old Gmail account was hacked. The whole situation was/is pretty identically to what this thread describes very well:
https://support.google.com/accounts/thread/42850129?hl=en

I've written off the old account and am no longer attempting to recover it. But the emails still forward to my new account, and I'm going crazy with curiosity. Every day or so, I get an email that a new source was granted access to my hacked account, followed by a random weather-report-style email.

Here's another example:

Other email texts include:

Dear Marie Ross !
How do you do? Marie Ross. In Wednesday will have sunny partly

and

Dear Russell Allen !
Good morning Russell Allen. In Friday will have rainySent from my iPhone

You get the picture.

Forget recovering the account: does anyone have any idea what the end-game is?

 

[Wrichik Basu]

does anyone have any idea what the end-game is?

I don't, but just wanted to say that please secure your new account with two-step verification — in Gmail, when email forwarding is active, a notice is shown on the top of the inbox. Apparently the hacker knows that you have another account, and will try to hack that one too.

 

[Jarvis323]

Hey, a month or two ago, my old Gmail account was hacked. The whole situation was/is pretty identically to what this thread describes very well:
https://support.google.com/accounts/thread/42850129?hl=en

I've written off the old account and am no longer attempting to recover it. But the emails still forward to my new account, and I'm going crazy with curiosity. Every day or so, I get an email that a new source was granted access to my hacked account, followed by a random weather-report-style email.
View attachment 273421
View attachment 273422

Here's another example:
View attachment 273423
Other email texts include:and
You get the picture.

Forget recovering the account: does anyone have any idea what the end-game is?

Maybe the weather report looking emails are designed to fool spam detectors. Small talk about the weather is probably really common, so such an email would be hard to detect as something sent by a bot.

Emails can have 'pixels' embedded in them so that the sender can detect if the email was checked. If they can get these emails through spam filters, they can use them to try to guess if an email account is being used or has been abandoned.

 

[mbrmbrg]

I don't, but just wanted to say that please secure your new account with two-step verification — in Gmail, when email forwarding is active, a notice is shown on the top of the inbox. Apparently the hacker knows that you have another account, and will try to hack that one too.

Thanks! My guess is that my current email address gets these emails due to forwarding that I set up ages ago, but you're right: two-step verification is definitely prudent.

 

[mbrmbrg]

Maybe the weather report looking emails are designed to fool spam detectors. Small talk about the weather is probably really common, so such an email would be hard to detect as something sent by a bot.

Emails can have 'pixels' embedded in them so that the sender can detect if the email was checked. If they can get these emails through spam filters, they can use them to try to guess if an email account is being used or has been abandoned.
...They can then post auto generated comments on news sites, you-tube, and social media, as well as use it to send phishing emails to unsuspecting victims (bypassing spam detection), including your contacts.

Mmmmm... Interesting. Thanks!

 

[Wrichik Basu]

My guess is that my current email address gets these emails due to forwarding that I set up ages ago

I am not questioning that, but the point is, the hacker definitely knows now that you have another account. He will surely try to hack this one too. Beware!