Hacking is such an old fashioned generic term which to the public meant something like a teenage boy in his basement, trying to get onto a government computer and start a war.

When in real life most computer programmers hack away at their computer, writing code. There not only seems to be a lot misconception not only what hacking is, but computers being compromised in general.

For most hacks to take place it usually has something to do with software already on the computer, tricked onto being put on their or otherwise, and vulnerabilities in the system being exploited, or the computer user themselves.

Most times when customers think they have been hacked, they have actually been tricked into allowing the criminal into their computer over the phone by loading some software to allow remote access to their machines.

This post looks to discuss the concept of hacking and viruses a little to clarify.

The difference between Hackers and Crackers

Generally speaking, the hackers are the ones who made your email program of web browser you use, and the crackers (like safe crackers) are the ones who will try to break it, or break into it for their own reasons.

The person who broke into your computer and stole all your person files, or the person who used some sort of software to get access to your email account is using some sort of cracking techniques.

Although there are many skilled hackers and crackers out there, are good part of the computer crime most people come across on a daily basis on their computer is due to bad software in the form of a virus or malicious code they have accidentally downloaded onto their computer from a web page and installed.

Technique: Social Engineering

By far probably the most widely used technique to gain access to your files or computer is through social engineering.

Social Engineering is simple. Someone calls you up on the phone sends you an email (or rarely meets you in person) and pretends to know you, have something to do with you, from your telephone provider etc.

They will have a little bit of freely available information about you and spin it in away to hopefully gain your trust.

A lot of people say, “How can anyone fall for this?”

But the truth is these sort of telephone scams have been going on for 50 years and don’t look like stopping any time soon, so they must be very profitable.

The more information you give them, the more it helps them next time.

A lot of people get tricked into these scams and download software the caller tells them too which gives the criminals access to your computer.

If this happens, turn your computer off immediately and give Townsville computer repair Nerds a call on 0402 807 890.

Brute Force Attack

This is a technique used by simple trial and error.

Trying to guess someones email password for instance would take forever. So criminals use some sort of software which basically throws a whole bunch of passwords at a login on a server until one of them finally works and they have access to a particular system like website or email.

Many systems now use login attempt limits like on your ATM card – You get the password wrong too many times and you are either locked out for a period of time or you need to call the service provider and reinstate your credentials.

Keyloggers

Keyloggers are scary. They don’t really do a whole lot but look what buttons you press on your keyboard and report them back to somewhere and someone.

This doesn’t sound like a big deal, but you press a key on your keyboard every time you enter a username and or password.

One day you might login to you bank account online using your username and password and the next you mike log into your email.

If a keylogger is on your computer there is the potential that someone could have access to the keys you have pressed and in turn have access to your bank accounts, emails etc.

Keyloggers are usually installed by someone sitting behind your computer when you are not aware and installing it to run in the background.

If someone has access to your computer remotely they could do this also and there have been cases of software bundles being downloaded and secretly installed along with other software packages someone has downloaded off the internet like, music, video, pornography and games.