CrackingBy: shiteshCracking is a very big issue. Most people do not really know what cracking is.There are different types of cracking. There is password cracking, system orsecurity cracking, and software cracking.A cracker is defined as a person who compromises the security of a system withoutpermission. Many people would call that a hacker. But that would only be correctif you called it a black hat hacker. Most hackers are white hat hackers.A hacker in computer programming is a software designer and programmer who buildprograms and systems that garner the respect of one's peers. In computersecurity, a hacker is a person who specializes in work with the securitymechanisms for computer and network systems. (Wikipedia)Password cracking is the process of discovering the plaintext of an encryptedcomputer password. The purpose of password cracking might be to help a userrecover a forgotten password, to gain unauthorized access to a system, or as apreventive measure by system administrators to check for easily crackablepasswords. (Wikipedia)Password cracking does not always involve complicated tools. It can be justtrying to guess at the password, finding a sticky note with the password writtenon it, or it can even be dumpster diving. Or a password cracker could go the moreadvanced way by using dictionary attacks, hybrid attacks, or brute force attacks.Out of the three the fastest is the dictionary attack. It is a text file ofdictionary words that is loaded into a cracking app. This is run against theusers account and it will usually crack the password because most passwords usedare dictionary words. The hybrid attack adds symbols and numbers to crack apassword. Then there is brute force attack. It can sometimes take a very longtime to work. The L0phtcrack now known as LC4 can be used as a brute forceattack. The LC4 is a tool that allows an attacker to take encrypted passwords andconvert them into plaintext. These passwords are usually stored in cryptographichashes. How this works is it attempts every alphanumeric combination possible totry to crack the password. That is why it takes so long to do a brute forceattack. (Shimonski)There is also the protocol analyzer or network sniffer. What this does is itcaptures every piece of data on the network segment to which it connected itself.This tool runs in promiscuous mode and it can sniff everything on that particularsegment that it is connected to like logins and data transfers. (Shimonski)System cracking or security cracking is the defeating of security devices incomputer networks without permission. (Wikipedia)Some common methods used to crack into systems are security exploits packetsniffers, rootkits, social engineering, Trojan horse, virus, vulnerabilityscanner, and worms. A security exploit is a prepared app that takes advantage ofa known weakness. A packet sniffer is an app that captures TCP/IP data packets.A root kit is a tool that hides the fact that a computer’s security has beencompromised. Social engineering is the act of convincing people to provideinformation about a system like a password by posing as someone else. A Trojanhorse is a program that is designed so that it looks to be doing one thing when itis actually doing something different. A virus is a self-replicating program thatspreads by inserting copies of itself into other executable code or documents. Avulnerability scanner is a tool that quickly checks a computer or network forknown weaknesses. And last the worm. It is like a virus but it does not makecopies of itself on one system. It spreads through computer networks. (Wikipedia)
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