6 Most Common Password Cracking Methods
There are many ways for criminals to hack your account or get your personal information. Today in this post I will share with you guys 6 The most commonly used method of cracking passwords and their countermeasures. You should check this article for security and to prevent your online accounts from being hacked.
1. BruteForce Attack
brute force attack
Any password can be cracked using Brute-force attacks. Brute-force attack tries every combination of numbers, letters and special characters until the password is the same. Brute-force attacks can take a very long time depending on the complexity of the password. Click-through time is determined by computer speed and password complexity.
Countermeasure: Use long, complex passwords. Try using a mixing of uppercase and lowercase letters and numbers. Brute-force attacks will take hundreds or thousands of years to unravel complex and long passwords.
Example: Passwords like "loveyou" or "password" can be easily broken within 1 to 2 hour and the computer will take years to decipher passwords like "aN34lL00". its a System generated password and very hard to break.
2. Social Engineering
Social engineering is a process of tricking someone into trusting you and getting information from them. For example, if a criminal was trying to obtain the computer password of co-workers or friends, he could call her pretending to be from the IT department and immediately ask for her login details. Sometimes criminals call the victim from the bank and ask for the details of their credit cards. Social Engineering can be used to obtain personal information, bank details and any other personal information.
Countermeasure: If someone is trying to get your personal or bank details, ask them a few questions. Make sure the caller is legitimate. Never give out your credit card details over the phone.
3. Mice And Keylogger
keylogger
Upon entering the key or RATing the hacker sends a keylogger or mouse to the victim. This allows the hacker to monitor everything the victim does on his computer. All keystrokes are included including passwords. Moreever hacker can control even computer victims.
Countermeasure: Never log into your bank account using a cyber cafe or other computer. If its key use is on screen or virtual keyboard while you are logging in. Use the latest anti-virus software and keep them informed. See below article for more information on mice and keyloggers.
What is RAT?
What Is A Keylogger And How Can You Be Safe In Keyloggers?
4. Theft of sensitive information
crime of stealing sensitive information
Identity theft is the simplest and most popular form of fraud used by criminals to obtain personal information. In the case of a phishing scam, send a fake web site such as facebook, gmail to the victim. When someone logs in to that fake page their details are sent to the scam. These fake pages can be easily created and hosted on free web hosting sites.
Countermeasure: The crime of stealing sensitive information is very easy to avoid. The url of these phishing scams is very different from the real one. For example the URL of a facebook theft page may look like facebookbbook.com (As you can see There are two "b"). Always make sure the url of the websites is correct. Check out the article below to find out more about phishing scams.
All About Crime Theft And How Can You Be Safe From Crime Theft?
5. Rainbow Table
The Rainbow Table is a large computer-generated list of horses for every possible combination of characters. Password hash password that has passed through a mathematical algorithm such as md5 and is converted into an invisible object. Hash is a single encryption method so once the password is speeded up there is no way to get the original character unit in the hash string. The most commonly used hashing algorithm to store passwords in website archives is MD5. It is almost like a dictionary attack, the only difference being that, in the rainbow tables the hash letters are used as passwords and in dictionary attacks the normal letters are used as passwords.
Example: ‘hello’ on md5 by 5d41402abc4b2a76b9719d911017c592 and zero unit ("") says d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
Countermeasure: Make sure you choose a long and complex password. Creating confidential and complex word tables takes a lot of time and resources
6. Guessing
password guessing
This may seem silly but this can easily help you get someone's password in seconds. If the perpetrator knows, he can use the information he knows about you to guess your password. Hacker can also use a combination of Social Engineering and Guessing to get your password.
Action Step: Do not use your name, surname, phone number or birthday as your password. Try to avoid creating a password related to you. Create a complex and long password with a combination of letters and numbers.