4 Ways Hackers Crack Passwords

Hackers use a variety of means to gain passwords. One of the most common ways for hackers to get access to your passwords is through social engineering, but they don’t stop there.

Keystroke logging

One of the best techniques for capturing passwords is remote keystroke logging — the use of software or hardware to record keystrokes as they’re typed.

Phishing

Phishing is described as a fraudulent activity that is done to steal confidential user information such as credit card numbers, login credentials, and passwords. It is usually done by using email or other forms of electronic communication by pretending to be from a reliable business entity.

Examples- Requested actions in a phishing email include: Clicking an attachment. Enabling macros in Word document. Updating a password.

Brute force attack

A brute force attack uses trial-and-error to guess login info, encryption keys, or find a hidden web page. Hackers work through all possible combinations hoping to guess correctly.

While some attackers still perform brute force attacks manually, today almost all brute force attacks today are performed by bots. Attackers have lists of commonly used credentials, or real user credentials, obtained via security breaches or the dark web.

BRUTE FORCE ATTACK

Dictionary attack

A dictionary attack is a method of breaking into a password-protected computer, network or other IT resource by Discard changes?

systematically entering every word in a dictionary as a password. A dictionary attack can also be used in an attempt to find the key necessary to decrypted an encrypted message or document.

A dictionary attack uses a word list: a predefined list of words, and each word in the list is hashed. If the cracking software matches the hash output from the dictionary attack to the password hash, the attacker has successfully identified the original password

If you like the post please share with friends and continuous reading trending technologies.