1. Social Engineering:- Social engineering is when a hacker takes advantage of trusting human beings to get information from them. For example, if the hacker was trying to get the password for a co-workers computer, he (Even though I use “he”, hackers are of both genders, and I just chose to use “he” in these examples.) could call the co-worker pretending to be from the IT department.
2. Shoulder Surfing:- Shoulder surfing is exactly what it sounds like. The hacker would simply attempt to look over your shoulder as you type in your password. The hacker may also watch weather you glance around your desk, looking for a written reminder or the written password itself.
3. Guessing – If you use a weak password, a hacker could simple guess it by using the information he knows about you. Some examples of this are: date of birth things like these.
here are a high-tech techniques that require some application :
1. Dictionary Attacks - A dictionary attack is when a text file full of commonly used passwords, or a list of every word from the dictionary is used against a password database. Strong passwords usually aren’t vulnerable to this kind of attack. You can use Brutus, a very common password cracker, to show a dictionary attack against an ftp server. Brutus is a Windows only program
2. Brute-force Attacks - With time, brute-force attacks can crack any passwords. Brute-force attacks try every possible combination of letters, numbers, and special characters until the right password is found. Brute-force attacks can take a long time. The speed is determined by the speed of the computer running the cracking program and the complexity of the password.
3. Rainbow Tables - A Rainbow table is a huge pre-computed list of hash values for every possible combination of characters. A password hash is a password that has gone through a mathematical algorithm that transformed it into something absolutely foreign. A hash is a one way encryption so once a password is hashed there is no
way to get the original string from the hashed string. A very common hashing algorithm used as security to store passwords in website databases is MD5.
Let’s say you are registering for a website. You put in a username and password. Now when you submit, your password goes through the MD5 algorithm and the outcome hash is stored in a database. Now since you can’t get the password from the hash, you may be wondering how they know if your password is right when you login. Well when you login and submit your username and password, a script takes your password and runs it through the md5 algorithm. The outcome hash is compared to the hash stored in the database. If they are the same, you are admitted.
If I were to run the word “cheese” through the md5 algorithm, the outcome would be fea0f1f6fede90bd0a925b4194deac11. Having huge tables of every possible character combination hashed is a much better alternative to brute-force cracking. Once the rainbow tables are created, cracking the password is a hundred times faster than brute-forcing it.
4. Phishing - Phishing is the process of stealing sensitive information, such as usernames, passwords, and bank information, by pretending to be someone you’re not. An example of this would be if you receive and e-mail from a hacker pretending to be your bank. In this e-mail, it might tell you that you need to update your account before it expires, and then the hacker provides a link. Once you click on the link, you arrive at a website that looks exactly like your actual bank page. In reality it’s just a perfect replica, and when you input your login details, it sends it to the hackers email or stores it on his web server. Hackers that create the best, most deceiving phishing web pages are knowledgeable in the area of HTML and the php programming.
Above mentioned password cracking techniques are very much successful
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