Password cracking is when a hacker uncovers plaintext passwords or unscrambles hashed passwords stored in a computer system. Password cracking tools leverage computing power to help a hacker discover passwords through trial and error and specific password cracking algorithms.
If a hacker discovers your password, they can steal your identity, steal all your other passwords, and lock you out of all your accounts. They can also set up phishing attacks to trick you into giving up more sensitive data, install spyware on your devices, or sell your data to data brokers.
As technology has advanced, guessing passwords has become easier for hackers. While some of the best password managers can defend against password cracking tools, learning about common password cracking techniques is a great way to swing the odds in your favor.
Sometimes all a hacker has to do is wait for a data breach to leak millions of passwords and private details. Hackers often share and trade sensitive data they find, so it pays to have privacy software like Avast BreachGuard that helps prevent companies from selling your personal info, protects you from social media snoops, and scans the web in case your sensitive details are out there.
A brute force attack is when hackers use computer programs to crack a password through countless cycles of trial and error. A reverse brute force attack attempts to crack a username through the same method. Brute force attacks are simple yet effective.
The worst passwords are sequential letters and numbers, common words and phrases, and publicly available or easily guessable information about you. These simple passwords are incredibly easy to crack via brute force, and they could end up in a data breach sooner or later.
A dictionary attack is a type of brute force attack that narrows the attack scope with the help of an electronic dictionary or word list. Dictionary attacks target passwords that use word combinations, variations on spellings, words in other languages, or obscure words that are too slippery for a regular brute force attack.
A mask attack reduces the workload of a brute force attack by including part of the password a hacker already knows in the attack. If a hacker knows your password has 10 characters, for example, they can filter the attack for passwords of only that length.
Mask attacks can filter by specific words, numbers within a certain range, special characters the user prefers, or any other password characteristics the hacker is confident about. If any of your data is leaked, it makes you more vulnerable to a full-on breach.
Social engineering is a technique where criminals manipulate people into giving up compromising information. In the context of hacking, social engineering a password is when hackers trick someone into divulging their password details, such as by pretending to be tech support.
Social engineering takes many forms, especially in the age of social media. Ever come across a quirky social media quiz asking you to enter your first pet and street to create a superhero name? A hacker may be trying to social engineer the answers to your password security questions.
Spidering is when hackers crawl a company's social media accounts, marketing campaigns, or other corporate material to gather a word list for a brute force or dictionary attack. Spidering can become social engineering when hackers infiltrate businesses for physical handbooks and training manuals full of keywords.
Shoulder surfing is a social engineering technique of spying over someone's shoulder as they enter login details. Shoulder surfing is a common way to discover ATM PINs, which is why most people are wary of their surroundings while taking out money.
Offline cracking is when hackers transfer hashed passwords offline to crack them more safely and efficiently. Online attacks are vulnerable to discovery, can trigger a lockout after too many attempts, and are hampered by a network's speed. With offline cracking, a hacker is invisible, can attempt infinite logins, and is limited only by their own computer power.
Hashed passwords can be taken directly from a database by tried-and-true hacker techniques such as SQL injection. If a hacker gains administrator privileges, it's game over for all the passwords on the admin's system. Learning how to password-protect files and folders can save admins from a disastrous password breach.
A wily cybercriminal can put the pieces together like a jigsaw puzzle and then get cracking. Hacker communities share hashed passwords, user profiles, credit card numbers, and other lucrative material on the dark web. A dark web scan can show you if your information is up for grabs.
Network analysers are a dangerous modern password hacking tool, since they don't rely on exploits or security flaws in a network. After a network analyzer sniffs out the packets, a packet capturing tool can steal the payload of passwords inside.
A packet capturing tool can act as a sniffer for the packets of data moving across a network. One part of a packet is the origin and destination, while the other part is the actual data it is carrying, such as passwords.
With tech companies and other third parties collecting so much data, password crackers can pluck your private details out of the air. Your best bet is rival technology that can fight back and can keep your data away from hacker hands, such as a secure browser with anti-tracking tech.
You might recognize the subject line too as it's from a previous conversation. But beware the image of an attachment in the email. It contains malicious software code designed to get your to turn over your login and password.
It's a new way that computer scammers are going after Gmail accounts, a technique that software company Wordfence calls "highly effective." Wordfence, which develops software to protect WordPress blogs from hackers, recently sounded an alarm about the new hack.
Compromised email can lead to all sorts of problems. For instance, a hacker with access to your email box can reset your password for other accounts, such as Twitter or Facebook, and cause havoc. Your email inbox may contain important personal and financial information too.
An attachment, with a description that you may recognize, will appear as an image at the bottom of the email. After you click on it, a new browser tab opens with a form to log in to see what the attachment is.
"You're in a rush and you think you've been signed out and you will go ahead and sign in again," Maunder said. "At that point, the hackers have your email address and your password and they have to access to your account."
What happened? Instead of taking you to a fake website, as many email phishing hacks do, clicking on the image of an attachment sent computer code which opened up a new browser tab and presented you with a fake sign-on, Maunder said.
JtR supports several common encryption technologies out-of-the-box for UNIX and Windows-based systems. (ed. Mac is UNIX based). JtR autodetects the encryption on the hashed data and compares it against a large plain-text file that contains popular passwords, hashing each password, and then stopping it when it finds a match. Simple.
In our amazing Live Cyber Attack demo, the Varonis IR team demonstrates how to steal a hashed password, use JtR to find the true password, and use it to log into an administrative account. That is a very common use case for JtR!
JtR also includes its own wordlists of common passwords for 20+ languages. These wordlists provide JtR with thousands of possible passwords from which it can generate the corresponding hash values to make a high-value guess of the target password. Since most people choose easy-to-remember passwords, JtR is often very effective even with its out-of-the-box wordlists of passwords.
Below is the JtR command from our Live Cyber Attack Webinar. In this scenario, our hacker used kerberoast to steal a Kerberos ticket granting ticket(TGT) containing the hash to be cracked, which was saved in a file called ticket.txt. In our case, the wordlist used is the classic rockyou password file from Kali Linux, and the command was set to report progress every 3 seconds.
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WARNING: This article is your go-to guide for understanding Gmail security, but hey, we're strictly keeping it educational, alright? No room for mischief here. We're all about boosting your savvy when it comes to keeping those Gmail accounts under lock and key!
Keeping your online accounts safe is a top priority, especially when it comes to the likes of Gmail. With our lives spinning deeper into the digital universe, guarding our personal and professional info has never been more crucial. Gmail isn't just an email platform anymore; it's our hub for communication, file sharing, and accessing a world of services. But with great use comes great risk, and hackers are always sniffing around for a way in.