The Truth About Hacking
By Eviper
Again I feel a mini series coming on this will cover all the things that can be “a bit iffy” in terms of the cyber world.
Disclaimer: None of this may be considered true if taken the wrong way, pretty much you can’t sue me.
First up lets cover that hacking is a specific kind of cybercrime but today it is often applied as a “bludgeon” term for any cyber crime. Hacking is when a hacker uses a script to completely bypass a security system or gets in through “the back door” meaning that they don’t need your password to access information or gain control of your online assets.
What do you call someone who finds the password for your account then? Well there are a few different ways to do this and thus different names. The most sure-fire way to get into the system is to “crack” someone’s password a cracker is someone who uses powerful computers to try all of the combinations of passwords. This is not something that a casual cybercriminal can do; it takes a lot of computing power to crack a password and medium strength passwords take weeks or months to crack. If you have a long and strong password then you are safe; it can take millions of years for a desktop computer to try enough combinations to crack your password. But be warned if you have a common or short password it can be dangerous; these passwords are so weak that it only takes simple computers seconds to crack them.
The next way is to reset your password using a password recovery key or a password reset. These kinds of cybercriminals are called “Lackers” they will often try to guess the answer of your password question by looking for clues on your social media accounts. These kinds of cybercriminals need to know a lot about you and will often have access to some of your online accounts without you even knowing about it. If they do have access these accounts they will know your passwords. The best ways to protect against a lacker is to have different passwords and to shut down your accounts and any linked accounts if you notice anything fishy.
Other stuff commonly associated with hackers is viruses. Viruses is another term that is not often used correctly the correct term for a virus is malware which is short for malicious software. There are many different types of malware. Viruses are a type of malware that is most often used they can copy themselves so if they are detected and removed they may survive. Worms are a kind of malware that can infect other servers and proliferate spreading very quickly. Another kind of malware is spyware, a program that spies on you and collects information such as accounts and personal details. The final kind of malware that can be dangerous is a Trojan virus it pretends to be a useful program but is actually a dangerous kind of malware.
Hopefully you now know the truth about hacking.