How Easy Is It To Steal Your Credential? It's Not That Difficult!

It looks a lot of people think that they must be an influential/ important target to get hacked or they just aren't aware of how simple it is for a hacker to hijack their credentials. But it's much easier and happens more often than you think.

Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay

Mass theft: According to several studies, most of the people around the world use the exact same login credentials for all their online accounts. Hackers generally run several custom build programmes that store stolen user credentials from the dark web or other sources. You absolutely don't want to be on that list.

And, in case you were using the same login credentials, you are doomed now! I can understand that using different passwords can be hard to remember and so you might be practicing the good old technique of writing down the passwords on a notepad, well here goes the " purpose of having different types of the password in the first hand"! Don't worry if you are following those above-mentioned practices.

If you are not comfortable using a different type of passphrase, the HyperFIDO U2F token can defend you from those kinds of attacks or problems while making certain you do not need to memorize or come up with a complex sequence of digits and symbols just to keep your accounts secure.

video by Law Abiding Citizen

Public WIFI: WIFI is everywhere. From the international airport to your dentist's office. It is highly possible that instead of talking to someone like good old 80s, you intend to socialize with the help of the internet! Now, you have turned on the WIFI and logged in into your favorite social networking site, and, there goes your secret password to the dark side! How? To intercept a username or password, you don't have to be a good hacker. It is one of the easiest ways to steal someone's credentials.

Anyone who has the admin access of the WIFI router, he/she can effortlessly analyze the incoming or outgoing data through tools like Wireshark. Once you logged in, this tools can notify the admin and then the person on the other side can intercept your username password and they can download the file into their local drive to use in future. Once you logged off from the wifi, then he/she will analyze your outgoing URLs. Maybe you have ordered something from Amazon and paid from your credit or debit card?

Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay

Well, get ready to be robbed now! Public WIFI maintainer even can blackmail you. Yes, you read it right. They can intercept your outgoing texts, documents or images, so if you have sent something very private to your friend or business colleague they can use those files to earn money from you. So be cautious about public hotspot, you never know who is at the other end. I can give you a solution though. It doesn't matter if you are using Android, IOS, Windows or other types of OS, when you are connected to a public hotspot, use VPN apps, most of them are free and they will encrypt the traffic so no one can look inside your private data.

Phishing: This attack has gained immense popularity throughout the hacker world nowadays. And, they are getting more and more sophisticated every single day. Say, you got a link on email or text that says Amazon or Walmart is offering an offer that you can't refuse. See what I did there! Well, to get the offer you rushed in and simply clicked the link which redirected you to a website similar to the original vendor. You selected the products and during checkout, you used your debit/ credit card or internet banking. Boom! They have your information. So always be cautious about the website you are getting into. Make sure the website link is matching to the original website link. Never believe in your eyes. Before ordering something or making payment through the internet, double-check the URLs. It is for your own safety.

Image by Jhonatan_Perez from Pixabay

There's a lot more attack types that remains yet to be discussed. And I will continue to talk about them in my upcoming articles. Till then, be vigilant and stay safe.

Resources used

https://terranovasecurity.com/what-is-identity-theft/

https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/cyber

https://www.britannica.com/topic/cybercrime

https://www.kaspersky.com/resource-center/threats/what-is-cybercrime

https://cybertalents.com/blog/what-is-cyber-crime-types-examples-and-prevention

https://www.techtarget.com/searchsecurity/definition/cybercrime

https://www.interpol.int/en/Crimes/Cybercrime

https://www.iii.org/fact-statistic/facts-statistics-identity-theft-and-cybercrime

https://www.guru99.com/cybercrime-types-tools-examples.html