6 Most Popular Methods For Cracking Passwords And Their Countermeasures

1. Phishing
Phishing is the most easiest and popular hacking method used by hackers to get someone account details. In Phishing attack, hacker will send fake page of real website like Accessbank, facebook to victim. When someone login through that fake page his details is automatically sent to the hacker. This fake pages can be easily created and hosted on free web-hosting sites.
Countermeasure: Phishing attacks are very easy to avoid. The url of this phishing pages are different from the real one. For example URL of phishing page of Accessbank might look likeAccesbank.com (As you can see There is only one “s”. Always make sure that websites url is correct, and never follow an email link to login account details (Especially Bank Accounts).
2. BruteForce Attack
Any password can be cracked using Brute-force attack. Brute-force attacks try every possible combinations of numbers, letters and special characters until it matches the correct password. Brute-force attacks can take a very long time depending upon the complexity of the password. And the cracking time is determined by the speed of computer and complexity of the password.
Countermeasure: Use long and complex passwords. Try to use combination of upper and lowercase letters along with numbers and possibly characters. Brute-force attack will take hundreds or even thousands of years to crack such complex and long passwords.
Example: Passwords like “myrealname” or “mypassword” can be cracked easily whereas computer will take thousand of days to crack passwords like “Ya34lL!”
3. Rats and Keylogger
In keylogging or RATing the hacker sends keylogger or rat to the victim. This allows hacker to monitor every thing victim do on his/her computer. Every keystroke is logged which includes passwords and usernames. Moreover hackers can even control the victims computer to perform some remote functions.
Countermeasure: Never login to your bank account from cyber cafe or someone else computer. If its important use on-screen or virtual keyboard while tying the login. Use latest anti-virus software and keep them updated. And never install any file from the internet without proper scanning and verifying the source.
4. Rainbow Table
A Rainbow table is a huge pre-computed list of hashes for every possible combination of characters. A password hash is a password that has gone through a mathematical algorithm such as md5 or CHA5 and is transformed into something which is not recognizable. 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 commonly used hashing algorithm to store passwords in website databases is MD5. It is almost similar to dictionary attack, the only difference is, in rainbow tables attack hashed characters are used as passwords whereas in dictionary attack normal characters are used as passwords.
Example: (“hello” in md5 is 5d41402abc4b2a76b9719d911017c592 and empty string (“” is d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
Countermeasure: Make sure you choose password that is long and complex. Creating tables for long and complex password takes a very long time and a lot of resources.
5. Guessing
This looks silly but this can easily help hackers to get ones password within seconds. If the hacker knows you, he can use information he knows about you to guess your password. Hacker can also use combination of Social Engineering and Guessing to acquire your password.
Countermeasure: Don’t use your name, surname, phone number or date of birth as your password. Try to avoid creating password that relates to you. Create complex and long password with combination of letters and numbers which has nothing really about your personal information.
6. Social Engineering
Social engineering is process of manipulating someone to trust you and get information from them. For example, if the hacker was trying to get the password of a co-workers or friends computer, he could call him pretending to be from the IT department and simply ask for his login details. Sometimes, hackers call the victim pretending to be from bank and ask for their credit cards details. Social Engineering can be used to get someone password, to get bank credentials or any personal information.
Countermeasure: If someone tries to get your personal or bank details, refer them to check their database. If they are legit, they should have every details they need without having to call you.
Never ever give your password and credit card details for any reason.

Source:Windrey