"Hacking" is way different then you think it is By Katherine Lightwood

"Hacking" is way different then you think it is

By Katherine Lightwood 

In movies, hacking is all finesse, excitement, and genius coding but in reality, it's boring, time taking and ancient.

Passwords are like apples in a fictional garden. they are perfect, ripe and they are for taking if you know how. 

So, for non-nerds, let me tell you passwords are not stored in form of words but as a set of encrypted characters called hashes. And if I want to access any person's account I don't really need their passwords. I just have to find the thing that lets me decrypt that hash. 

And to do that, hackers sometimes use 'lookup tables' and 'rainbow tables'- data files of common passwords that are pre-hashed. And if hackers have this beforehand and have millions of common passwords, they can just compare them and can access to your account. 

And hackers can do this comparison really fast. But big companies have a weapon against those 'rainbow tables' called 'salt'. Not like literal salt, it basically takes random chunks of code and tosses them into a hashed password. 

If 'salt' and 'hashes' are found, the 'rainbow table' becomes useless. They will never find a match. Computers aren't that great at problem-solving. So, even this little change can fumble automated hacking programme. Without the tables, everything takes longer time. Hackers have to find how that 'salt' was added- beginning of each password? What is the 15th character? Then they have to figure out what the salt characters are? 

And usually, salted passwords are enough to stop lots of hackers, because it's faster to change tack and use dictionary attacks and brute force attacks. 

Dictionary attacks use wordlists to take common passwords like Passwords123 and try them out. 

Brute force attacks are even crazier, starting with say 'aaaa', salt and hash it in various ways and compare those to the database, then aaab, aaac and they try every possible combination. And it takes forever. 

If you are on an open wi-fi network without a password, you are basically shouting your passwords for anyone listening to hear. Some hackers will set up fake 'free wifi' points to get common passwords and email addresses, and others just use spam.     

If you click on a word document or a link in the email, it can execute the code on your computer called malware to copy everything you type including password credit card numbers, and whatever and send that directly to the hacker.

So, moral of the story always use long complicated passwords and never ever tell that to anyone.

  

So, that was my thought of the day. To see more posts like this make sure to visit our main page. And Do not forget to visit our institute's page to know more about graphic design, 3D, animation courses and other awesome stuff. Till then good day to you.

Katherine Lightwood