"Hackers Beware"

I borrowed a book from the library yesterday titled "Hackers Beware". I have been searching for these kind of books for months and finally found. This book talks about how hackers hack into peoples PCs and accounts, through several methods and loopholes of Windows. Apparently there is a file in your PC that contains your acc username and password. The aim of hackers is to try and dig out this file and decompile it into rich text format. They can do so through a number of programs, the best seemingly L0phtcrack. I have downloaded the latest trial version from the internet and cracked it(heheh) so now it is permanently mine. I am now using it to crack my computers password. This software uses several methods to crack.

Firstly, it guesses your password through a 'dictionary attack'. This means that it tries to login by entering a password numerous times off a database of words, terms and phrases. Secondly, it uses a 'hybrid attack'. This means that it guesses your password with both letters and numbers. If these two fail to get the password, it uses its ace in the hole, the 'brute force attack'. This method is guaranteed to get your password, as it tries every combination of letters and numbers, for example, aa, ab, ac and so on. The disadvantage of this method is that it is very time-consuming. The duration taken to crack your password depends on your length of your password and your CPU processor speed.

I recommend that your passwords to contain upper and lower case letters, combined with numbers and special characters(!,@,#,$ and so on), like mine. The reasoning behind this is that this kind of passwords will be foolproof against dictionary and hybrid attacks. But no password is uncrackable. It is only a matter of time. This is why I strongly advice you to use long passwords, preferably about 12-15 characters. This is because if your passwords is for instance ababababababa, compared to abababa, it will take considarably much longer time, even though both passwords are weak. Strong passwords like mine will need a brute force attack and looking at L0phtcrack's meter, it needs 20hrs to be cracked.

Having said so much, I still prefer one way of hacking: sending a trojan with a keylogger hidden inside through email and it will self-install upon opening of the message and will log in every keystroke, websites history and take screenshots during intervals. The best of all, it would not take up too much RAM so the user would not experience lagginess and would not suspect anything. Even if the user suspects something, he/she will usually just scan with a virus scanner, not harming the keylogger. It is the best and the easiest way to gain access to email accounts, game passwords and know which websites the victim surfs, and what programs he/she uses. Although I have not done so before and do not dare to, I think this is the best way of hacking.

I hope that this post is beneficial to your computer security. This shows that password strength is very important to your computer's security and I give my best wishes in preventing these kinds of malicious activities.