How Hacking Of Passwords Is Achieved

Password hacks can be performed in several ways. The most common used tool is social engineering. Social engineering consists in making a user believe that he is giving confidential information to a trusted party. For example, a cracker could pose as a system administrator from another country and ask for some personal information that could be considered irrelevant by the user. It's quite probable that that information was the last piece of the puzzle required by the cracker for acquiring the password of the user.

Another way of hacking passwords is through a hash function. A hash function is a program that transforms a determined password into a fixed length string. For example, if you have the password foxtrot1256, the hash function will transform it into a key, something like DG65HKSDLK43545SSDFEE232AQQQ10. Some programs use determined artifices for finding the password hidden inside the key.

Since computing power increased, the brute force attack became another choice for cracking passwords. How does it work? Well, it basically tests different kinds of character combinations until it finds the correct one. The problem with this method is that if the password is too long, then the brute force attack won't prosper, at least during a reasonable spam of time. In this kind of situations, it is better to use social engineering to find out the password.