On daily basis, we here or receive complaints of accounts being hacked, information being stolen, privacy intrusions and many more which shows that there are several methods used by hackers in hacking your account and also getting your personal information.

We have researched the most popular methods used by every hackers in getting your password and we are providing some countermeasures to those methods in this post.

NB: This post is not to teach you how to hack, but will provide a more secured suggestion on how prevent your password being hacked.

1. Phishing
Phishing is the most easiest and popular hacking method used by hackers to get someone account details. In Phishing attack, hacker will send fake page of real website like Accessbank, facebook to victim. When someone login through that fake page his details is automatically sent to the hacker. This fake pages can be easily created and hosted on free web-hosting sites.

Countermeasure: Phishing attacks are very easy to avoid. The url of this phishing pages are different from the real one. For example URL of phishing page of Accessbank might look likeAccesbank.com (As you can see There is only one "s". Always make sure that websites url is correct, and never follow an email link to login account details (Especially Bank Accounts).


2. BruteForce Attack
Any password can be cracked using Brute-force attack. Brute-force attacks try every possible combinations of numbers, letters and special characters until it matches the correct password. Brute-force attacks can take a very long time depending upon the complexity of the password. And the cracking time is determined by the speed of computer and complexity of the password.

Countermeasure: Use long and complex passwords. Try to use combination of upper and lowercase letters along with numbers and possibly characters. Brute-force attack will take hundreds or even thousands of years to crack such complex and long passwords.

Example: Passwords like "myrealname" or "mypassword" can be cracked easily whereas computer will take thousand of days to crack passwords like "Ya34lL!"


3. Rats and Keylogger
In keylogging or RATing the hacker sends keylogger or rat to the victim. This allows hacker to monitor every thing victim do on his/her computer. Every keystroke is logged which includes passwords and usernames. Moreover hackers can even control the victims computer to perform some remote functions.

Countermeasure: Never login to your bank account from cyber cafe or someone else computer. If its important use on-screen or virtual keyboard while tying the login. Use latest anti-virus software and keep them updated. And never install any file from the internet without proper scanning and verifying the source.


4. Rainbow Table
A Rainbow table is a huge pre-computed list of hashes for every possible combination of characters. A password hash is a password that has gone through a mathematical algorithm such as md5 or CHA5 and is transformed into something which is not recognizable. A hash is a one way encryption so once a password is hashed there is no way to get the original string from the hashed string. A very commonly used hashing algorithm to store passwords in website databases is MD5. It is almost similar to dictionary attack, the only difference is, in rainbow tables attack hashed characters are used as passwords whereas in dictionary attack normal characters are used as passwords.

Example: ("hello" in md5 is 5d41402abc4b2a76b9719d911017c592 and empty string ("" is d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e

Countermeasure: Make sure you choose password that is long and complex. Creating tables for long and complex password takes a very long time and a lot of resources.

5. Guessing
This looks silly but this can easily help hackers to get ones password within seconds. If the hacker knows you, he can use information he knows about you to guess your password. Hacker can also use combination of Social Engineering and Guessing to acquire your password.

Countermeasure: Don't use your name, surname, phone number or date of birth as your password. Try to avoid creating password that relates to you. Create complex and long password with combination of letters and numbers which has nothing really about your personal information.


6. Social Engineering
Social engineering is process of manipulating someone to trust you and get information from them. For example, if the hacker was trying to get the password of a co-workers or friends computer, he could call him pretending to be from the IT department and simply ask for his login details. Sometimes, hackers call the victim pretending to be from bank and ask for their credit cards details. Social Engineering can be used to get someone password, to get bank credentials or any personal information.

Countermeasure: If someone tries to get your personal or bank details, refer them to check their database. If they are legit, they should have every details they need without having to call you.
Never ever give your password and credit card details for any reason.

Source: http://blog.windrey.com/6-common-methods-cracking-passwords-countermeasures/

nice

Helpful, Thanks

Nice list.

Very informative write up

If e sure for them, make dem come help me hack my exam officer's system. I get tough exam today.



Exam loading.. SUCCESS

Washere op, fowosere must not see this one though

Nice write up and if you are interested in phishing and cracking and setting up RAT and Keyloggers then check out my signature.

Great info

This is what shd b making front page and not " should I eat with fork or spoon?"

That's true

Can't wait to be perfect at hacking. Nice tips op

Soft writeup

Hack is not preventable `

Phishing is the cheapest, that's the type where they send links to you claiming to be from access for FBN , alert or verification , 50% of Nigerian Internet users still fall for this , the only way not to fall for it is is google has flagged the site as [phishing otherwise most people just login and won't know what happened to them, For this , i advise you register for OTP or the alternative

Using brute force attack on a person is like sending an assassin to a victim, they usually hire hackers for specific targets or hackers use that for specific targets , if you do not have business disputes or angry ex , You shouldn't worry about this


rats and keyloggers? ha ha ha , These days its impossible to detect , countermeasure is update your antivirus daily or as soon as it's available and don't click links or programs you are not familiar with , especially if it's in your email and don't download free applications from sites you do not trust


Hashing is serious , but not common for Nigerians so do not worry


Guessing is common , especially if you are stewpyd enough to use the combination of your name and date of birth or abc,123, and stuffs like that , Use complex password


Social engineering Easiest , first attempt especially on facebook is clicking forgot password , facebook usually allows you to select picture of friends and identify them to reset your password

and on yahoo , attempt to recover email password , you'll be shown security questions , all you need do is ask victim on fb or whatsapp the specific questions , they probably forgot that it's their security question he ha ha


Anyways , Whenever you are on internet , use your sense

hummmmmm

Time to hack NL.

Lai lai! You no go see them post comments and ftc here.
Let lala post a snake and see them.
Mind lazy people.

Suxes:
This is what shd b making front page and not " should I eat with fork or spoon?"

Eat with ur brain

I have only used the phishing method, but I will explore others too. thanks for the info.

Ok

So I can use these stuffs to hack nairaland erhmm op?

G

hacking password......I hate
hacking programs.......me likey

Thanks for the info...

Ethical hackers

Nice one op! I'll like to add, there's the most deadly attack now called CRYPTOWALL RANSOMWARE, if you pc is attacked your files will be encrypted ...all your files renderinmg yur pc useless.
Hackers will tell you to pay via BITCOIN, and BITCOIN has high security, so tracing them thru such payment is almost Impossible


SOLUTION: You'll have to format your Harddrive
To get rid of the malware if affected



PREVENTION: always have a backup for the files on your drive just incase of an attack & avoid clicking links & attachments you don't know its source while browsing



REMEMBER, THIS HACK STYLE IS VERY VERY EFFECTIVE !!!

I hate dos emails

Ok naaa

nice one op