‘TeamViewer’ Denies Hacking Accusations, Blames Users For Carelessness

“TeamViewer,” the remote support software service used by many video game players admits they were attacked but denied claims by some users that they were hacked. Complaints started pouring in recently regarding incidents where PayPal accounts were drained of funds and orders made to Amazon and eBay while users had their “TeamViewer” accounts active. According to The Register, however, the service provider insists that they have found no breach in their security.

At around 0700 Pacific Time, “TeamViewer’s” DNS servers were shut down due to a DoS attack. The company sent out a tweet following the 3-hour downtime, apologizing for the inconvenience.

Unfortunately for the company, this added fuel to the accusations by some users who found that their computers were hacked at around the same time that the servers went down. One of the victims was a Twitch streamer named Doug, who spoke to The Register about the incident.

"Hackers got everything from me," Doug said. "They remote connected in at 5AM MT, went into my Chrome and used my PayPal to buy about $3k worth of gift cards. And yes, I had two-factor authentication."

Other users actually caught the hackers in action, with one seeing the cursor of his mouse move involuntarily. In response to the accusations that “TeamViewer’s” security was compromised, the company instead pointed to the carelessness of the users.

"Users are still using the same password across multiple user accounts with various suppliers,” the company said. “While many suppliers have proper security means in place, others are vulnerable.”

A Reddit thread discussing the hacking incident also yielded concessions among users where some admitted that they were not using the two-factor authentication that the company put in place in 2013. This recent attack on “TeamViewer” users is just one example of a rash of cyber breaches that happened over the last few months.