In hackers news most of the time we tend to give for granted that network and computers breaches only happen to the big names, enterprises such as Yahoo, Sony, Hashley Madison and so on.
However, this is not always the case.
First of all it depends from what the “hacker” is looking for and who he is. He might be a professional IT manager, computer nerd, or just a simple young fellow in search of having fun over the week end. The results and magnitude of the “hack” perpetrated will obviously vary from this characteristics and from the “tools” that the hacker have access to.
In other words, hacks are not a phenomenon restricted to a large organization but cover all the categories starting from the top businesses and ending to the normal web and PC home users.
So what can be done from us “the common technology users”..? Here are my best tips for online self defense when it comes to preventing anyone to access your precious data.
Let’s start from choosing the right password
Here is a quick 5 points list to help you to better secure your web accounts.
1-Create your own unique passwords
When selecting the ideal password to protect your many online accounts use a possible iteration of lower/uppercase letters and numbers adding also special characters.
2-Use a Dictionary for inspirations
It might be a little faster if you simply use something that you can remember, this could be a word or a phrase that makes sense to you. In some cases a dictionary is the perfect place to go. However do include numbers and special characters.
3-Avoid well known common mistakes
Play safe by starting avoiding common password. Find a list of passwords that are most commonly used, words like “password” is one of the most common passwords and probably not a good idea to use for your authentication. There’s other words like ninja or monkey12345 that are just as familiar and just as commonly used so they should be avoided.
There is a large database available on the internet, you can search on Google and even download from many different places that have a list of the most popular passwords or a list of every word that happens to be in the dictionary. The hackers are going to use that list first before they go into randomizing and trying to determine what you might have used.
4-Know what hackers know
One way hackers can use to find passwords is something called a hybrid attack where they’re going to use a very common set of dictionary words that they’re going to change up just a little bit and try different variations of those words. It’s not uncommon to see somebody that might use the password Apple for instance but they’ll put the number one after the apple or they might use ninja and put the number 9 or they might change the letter “a” to the number 2 or the number 7 for the letter “Z”. Hackers are well aware that people tend to do that so there are options in their brute-forcing programs where they can use a dictionary but change the words and add numbers to the end or replace letters with numbers. The letter i for example can be exchanged with the number one.
This is obviously going to take a little bit more time but rest assured that they have powerful scripts and computers capable to operate thousands of computations in minutes and they will eventually get succesful results if your password is already weak.
5-Stop reusing passwords
Absolutely do not use the same password for many different accounts. We all know that is much easier to remember only one password and have easy access to all our web accounts, (Facebook, Twitter, etc.). However, Hackers are always one step ahead and do know that the majority of us does this very same mistake.
You will be surprised to know how many times a successful hack for an email account has led to the subsequent access from the same hacker to dozens of different other accounts managed by the unaware victim.
This is it for this week, web security is a very broad field and I will definitely come back with more articles and cover other interesting and related topics such as network security, firewalls, spoofing, phishing and other various frauds/scams to avoid but for now I just would like to wish you a very safe browsing and see you very soon.
Digital Designer, blog writer and also a tech enthusiast.
He loves to write content for blogs, podcasts, design websites, logos, brochures, banners and anything that sends a message to an audience.
You can contact Daniele at the link below:
