Becoming Hackers Aren’t Tougher, You Just Have All The Right Tool
These days, hacking seems so common. It’s like a week won’t pass without hearing news about another site being hacked or passwords being leaked. So the situation begs the
Follow @thehackersmediaquestions, “Are passwords getting weaker or are hackers getting tougher?”
To be vigilant in choosing and keeping passwords secured. There are a lot of techniques in doing this like periodically changing your passwords, not telling everyone what your password is, using capital letters interchangeably with characters, numbers, etc. But all these efforts will be for naught if the site doesn’t salt your passwords. Salting passwords means they’re encrypting them so that it can’t be easily acquired. Most sites these days encrypt their users’ passwords but there are still some sites who do without salting. So how come passwords still get hacked if they’re encrypted? The answer is simple: hacking is now made easy.
It’s just that hackers these days have more hacking tools to aide them in their mission. Before, when hacking wasn’t that popular and computers aren’t that fast, hackers used a small list of passwords to guess user passwords. But as the time changed, the list grew. You’d think that hackers would have a tougher time cracking passwords since there’s now a bigger list to go through but you must not forget that computers these days are faster and can churn millions of data at the blink of an eye. Plus the fact that there are a lot of cracking software available these days, acquiring passwords may just be a walk in the park some.
There are two things you need to remember if you want to acquire passwords. First, if you do manage to get passwords of a certain site, there’s a huge possibility that it won’t be of any use to you since it’s hashed. Remember, sites encrypt passwords. So if a user uses the word “password” the hacker won’t see “password” but a code like “dzportsjd342nse9339f93qnnfgk134nsk4g” (not actual code) so he then needs to figure out what the code means before the password can be of any use to him. This is the reason why security companies often remind consumers to use an alphanumeric password, or inject some characters into them and avoid using obvious ones like your name and birthday, so hackers won’t easily access your account. Another thing to remember is to use different passwords for every site so in case one of your accounts gets compromised, your other accounts will still be secured.
The point is, users aren’t to blame if their accounts get hacked, it also doesn’t mean that the security measures of the service you are using is not commendable, hackers just have all the tools they need to do the task. So don’t beat yourself up. Still, it wouldn’t hurt if you make your passwords tougher.
To be vigilant in choosing and keeping passwords secured. There are a lot of techniques in doing this like periodically changing your passwords, not telling everyone what your password is, using capital letters interchangeably with characters, numbers, etc. But all these efforts will be for naught if the site doesn’t salt your passwords. Salting passwords means they’re encrypting them so that it can’t be easily acquired. Most sites these days encrypt their users’ passwords but there are still some sites who do without salting. So how come passwords still get hacked if they’re encrypted? The answer is simple: hacking is now made easy.
It’s just that hackers these days have more hacking tools to aide them in their mission. Before, when hacking wasn’t that popular and computers aren’t that fast, hackers used a small list of passwords to guess user passwords. But as the time changed, the list grew. You’d think that hackers would have a tougher time cracking passwords since there’s now a bigger list to go through but you must not forget that computers these days are faster and can churn millions of data at the blink of an eye. Plus the fact that there are a lot of cracking software available these days, acquiring passwords may just be a walk in the park some.
There are two things you need to remember if you want to acquire passwords. First, if you do manage to get passwords of a certain site, there’s a huge possibility that it won’t be of any use to you since it’s hashed. Remember, sites encrypt passwords. So if a user uses the word “password” the hacker won’t see “password” but a code like “dzportsjd342nse9339f93qnnfgk134nsk4g” (not actual code) so he then needs to figure out what the code means before the password can be of any use to him. This is the reason why security companies often remind consumers to use an alphanumeric password, or inject some characters into them and avoid using obvious ones like your name and birthday, so hackers won’t easily access your account. Another thing to remember is to use different passwords for every site so in case one of your accounts gets compromised, your other accounts will still be secured.
The point is, users aren’t to blame if their accounts get hacked, it also doesn’t mean that the security measures of the service you are using is not commendable, hackers just have all the tools they need to do the task. So don’t beat yourself up. Still, it wouldn’t hurt if you make your passwords tougher.
