Here are some ways that hackers use to hack your passwords
Many of you might have been victims to hackers
taking over your Facebook, Gmail or other email accounts. Some of you may have
lost some money to hackers after they took hacked your credit card information.
Most of the information hackers get is by hacking your password.
One way of keeping ahead of hackers is by
knowing how hackers hack password and what all methods and software’s
they generally use. By knowing how hackers can get into your account, you
will be in better situation to understand what are the possible ways you can
lose your account information and passwords & you can protect yourself from
getting hacked next time.
How do Hackers get Passwords?
There are some common
techniques which hackers use to hack passwords. One of them is phishing pages, where a
hacker will send a login page of Gmail or Facebook and it will look exactly the
same as real Facebook login page/Gmail login page. Most of the time they use
Social engineering skills like, they will send message saying “This person has
posted your bad picture on Facebook, click here to check your photo”, and once
you click on the link, you will be taken to login page, as soon as you enter
your password, it will be sent to hacker. Most of the times, hackers use sexual
posts to lure victims into divulging their accounts.
Hackers hack people
passwords for many reasons. Most cyber criminals do it for money. While others
do it just showing their skills or to use your Email account to send spam links
to your contact list or use your Facebook account to send spam application
link.
Though, the major problem comes when hackers get hold of your
private and sensitive data and blackmail starts. Here are the most likely
methods that hackers use to hack your passwords.
=>Social engineering:-
The most popular low-tech method for gathering passwords
is social engineering. Social engineering takes
advantage of the trusting nature of human beings to gain information that later
can be used maliciously. A common social engineering technique is simply to con
people into divulging their passwords. It sounds ridiculous, but it happens all
the time and even the most cautious of people fall prey to it.
=>Shoulder surfing:-
Shoulder surfing (the act of looking over
someone’s shoulder to see what the person is typing) which also known as visual
hacking, is an effective, low-tech password hack. It has existed since the time
computers became popular but has only been regarded as high risk now. Anyone
who has interest in your passwords has to look over your shoulders and note
down the passwords. It can happen at a ATM, in a cyber cafe or at an airport.
You can always protect yourself by glancing around before keying in the
password.
1. Keyloggers:-
This is one of the basic tool used for getting
your passwords. Keylogger resides in your system memory and runs at every
startup. These keyloggers log all the keystrokes you type. A log is created and
then it is sent to the Hacker. Most famous keylogger is the Ardamax Keylogger.
It can be customized so it doesn't show up in Windows “Processes” and notify
the victim.
The best solution to
avoiding Keyloggers is using Online virtual Keyboard when typing password for sensitive sites
like your bank account and PayPal account.
2. RAT:-
RAT stands for Remote Administration Tool.
With RAT, a hacker can connect to your PC, without your knowledge. He can see
what is going on the screen, what you are currently doing, which sites you
surf. It also has the built-in functionality of Keylogger.
Hacker can copy files
from your Hard disk to his computer, and all this without your knowledge. A
good example of RAT is Poison Ivy. It can be customized to connect to your PC
on a particular port number specified while creating the RAT.
3. Trojans:-
Now these are the most
common type of malware. Trojans spread through warez sites, torrent websites
or by clicking on mostly on risky links. All of you want free software. Right? Beware though! When you
download from warez sites or torrent websites. In all probability all software,
keygen and patches could contain Trojans. This means you will get the software
for free, but your computer will be infected by a Trojan.
There are many other ways which hacker usually uses, for example
if you are connected to internet on a LAN, which uses the same router , a
hacker can use any packet sniffer and base decoder to read all sensitive data
being transmitted from your computer.
To beat such hackers, always avoid public Wi-Fi
spots for banking, emails etc. Log in using HTTPS websites as they encrypt
the traffic between you and the server leaving the sniffers toothless. Glance
over your shoulders, use hard passwords, use password management software to
manage your passwords.
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