When you hear the word hacking, you can think of many
common things associated with it, including the image of a vicious masked
hacker sitting in front of a black computer screen and supercomputers working
day and night trying to crack complex codes, but in reality Hacking operations
are no longer limited to that only, as we hear about some teenagers hacking
very sensitive data and information from major global companies.
In fact, passwords are one of the most things that
hackers want to access. Through the password, the hacker will be able to access
your account and act on it as if it were you, and in general, if you set up a
complex and long password, you do not need to worry too much about your data,
and with There are many tricks and methods that hackers rely on in order to
guess the password, whether simple or complex and here are the most famous of
those techniques and how you can protect yourself from them.
password dictionary
Surely you know the normal dictionary of language and
you may have used it before, but the password dictionary is very different from
that as it is a program that tries to log into user accounts with the most
common and most used passwords, so it is called the password dictionary It may
include thousands or millions of passwords that people frequently use like
123456, qwerty, password, iloveyou, hunter2 and other common passwords that are
too easy or "trivial".
One of the best ways to avoid hacking your accounts
through this method is by setting strong and complex passwords for your
accounts, especially basic accounts such as a Google account. You can also use
a password manager, which sets very difficult passwords and saves them for you,
and of course, you should Avoid using common passwords that are easy to guess.
brute force attacks
Brute force attacks are more advanced and can access
more complex passwords because they do not rely on a pre-made list of passwords
but rather create new passwords by superimposing numbers and common phrases
with each other, which increases the possibility of accessing and cracking
complex passwords. These methods work through specialized programs that start
with the formation of common words first like 1q2w3e4r5t, zxcvbnm , qwertyuiop,
and of course the passwords we mentioned earlier and then these programs create
more complex words, and can keep trying millions of times until you come up
with the correct passwords.
In theory, this method can hack any password after a
large number of attempts, which can reach astronomical numbers, so the only way
to avoid this is to use complex passwords consisting of various characters such
as uppercase and lowercase letters, and the use of special symbols in passwords
such as @ and $ and & will make it very difficult.
phishing attack
Phishing is not a hack in the literal sense, but
rather a method of accessing users' personal and sensitive data, including
usernames and passwords, via fake emails. The trusted email automatically
blocks a lot of these messages, but a large percentage actually reaches users,
so you will need to check the validity of the email that always reaches you,
especially if it contains links or attachments.
One of the common ways in which phishing works is by
sending emails containing a fake link to a famous website as soon as you enter
this site, you will see the login page that looks exactly like the real one and
when the user types his data it is sent to the hacker immediately Thus, he will
be able to log into your account with ease, so the best way to protect yourself
from this hack is to not open suspicious emails and also increase the malicious
or spam email filters in the email service you are using.
Social engineering
Social engineering is phishing but it happens in the
real world and not on the screen, where hackers seek to access the personal
data of users, whether it is very sensitive information such as email addresses
and passwords through which accounts can be accessed immediately or from By
accessing other information such as phone numbers and important dates and then
trying to guess passwords based on them.
Despite the simplicity of this method, it led to
multi-million dollar hacking of international companies. A common example of
this method is fake phone calls, where a person claims to be affiliated with
the technical support of a particular company or bank and then requests
sensitive information such as security codes. Or the password and if the user
is not familiar with this trick, they may be an easy victim of this intruder.
Malware and Keylogger
Another method that many hackers rely on in order to
access sensitive data of users is by spreading viruses and malware everywhere
over the Internet, and these programs can include keylogger programs that
record all keystrokes and send them to the hacker, of course this method can
leads to hacking all your accounts because the hacker will get all the data
that you typed on your keyboard.
Fortunately, you can protect yourself from this method
very easily, as you can install protection and anti-virus programs that can
detect viruses and malware easily, and you should not download any files from
untrusted sites, including sites that provide you with cracks to hack programs,
etc. These files are often mined and contain very harmful malware and viruses
that can steal all your data in the blink of an eye.
In fact, there is no way to secure yourself 100%
against hacking, however, you can protect your personal data to a great extent
by setting strong passwords for your accounts, and if you are afraid of
forgetting or losing passwords, you can use one of the password management
programs that have become available in abundance at the moment.