Skip to main content

TeamViewer allegedly hacked, but the developer points the finger elsewhere

hacking, computing
CreativeCommons
Users of TeamViewer, a service for remote computer access and desktop sharing, are accusing the company of being hacked after several reports of people’s computers being breached and even PayPal and bank accounts emptied.

Reddit users were some of the first to notice the breaches weren’t limited to a few incidents and in some cases, date back a few weeks.

Recommended Videos

Then Nick Bradley, a cyber threat researcher at IBM, fell prey to the supposed hack. While in the middle of a game, his mouse cut off and TeamViewer opened up with any prompt. “As soon as I realize what is happening, I kill the application. Then it dawns on me: I have other machines running TeamViewer!” he wrote. Luckily as he was present with his other computers at the time, he was able to interrupt the attacker’s plans and then change his password.

Please enable Javascript to view this content

TeamViewer has since acknowledged the incident, but has placed the blame on users reusing passwords that may have already been compromised. User accounts connected to a number of major services including LinkedIn, MySpace, and Tumblr, have be revealed as compromised in recent weeks.

In a statement on Friday, TeamViewer spokesperson Axel Schmidt said the company contends cyber criminals accessed users’ accounts with stolen credentials from other data breaches. In other words, the company believes that people reusing the same passwords has caused this issue.

“We are appalled by the behavior of cyber criminals, and are disgusted by their actions towards TeamViewer users. They have taken advantage of common use of the same account information across multiple services to cause damage,” said Schmidt.

With the statement the company also announced two new security features to assist users – “Trusted Device,” a new option for enrolling a trusted device, and “Data Integrity,” an automated account monitoring feature.

Furthermore, TeamViewer did in fact suffer a DoS attack during the week that disrupted the network, but the company insists there was no security breach.

TeamViewer users still feel that the company isn’t taking enough responsibility and some users are struggling to buy the stolen credentials explanation as the sole source of these breached accounts.

But with no obvious alternative, it’s hard to say where else the blame might be placed.

For now, if you’re a TeamViewer user, make sure you don’t use the same password used on any other account. It’d also be a good idea to change your current password, just to be on the safe side.

Jonathan Keane
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Jonathan is a freelance technology journalist living in Dublin, Ireland. He's previously written for publications and sites…
Apple eyes AI push on the Vision Pro. What it needs is a health pivot
A man wears an Apple Vision Pro headset.

Apple’s ambitions in the immersive world of augmented and virtual reality (AR and VR) are off to a rough start. The $3,500 Vision Pro failed to kick off a market storm. Then came reports of Apple cancelling its AR smart glasses project.

The company, however, is not done yet. As per Bloomberg, Apple is bringing its suite of AI tools called Apple Intelligence to the visionOS platform. That means AI tricks such as Writing Tools, Genmoji, and Image Playground are coming to the headset.

Read more
Apple’s upcoming Studio Display could mean worrying news for pro users
A person uses an Apple Mac Pro alongside three monitors and an editing console in a darkened room.

Just a few days ago, we found out that Apple is working on a new Studio Display with a mini-LED screen. Now, that idea seems to be confirmed, with highly accurate Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman stating that this monitor should launch “by 2026.”

The Studio Display first saw the light of day in 2022, meaning there’s been a lengthy wait for updates. But that delay just highlights the problems with an even older Apple monitor: 2019’s Pro Display XDR.

Read more
Nvidia RTX 5080 vs. RTX 4080 Super
Fans on the RTX 5080.

The RTX 5080 didn't blow us away in our testing, but there's no denying that it's the second fast graphics card in the world, behind Nvidia's ludicrously-priced RTX 5090 halo card. Still, if you are sitting on a last-generation RTX 4080 Super, or found one at a good price second hand and are weighing up the pros and cons, it's useful to know how these cards compare.

So, let's take a look at the RTX 5080 and RTX 4080 Super, to see how the measure up.

Read more