The words “hacking” and “hacker” have become very common in today’s society. Every day, we hear people getting their phones or computers hacked. Therefore, you can say that it has become a nuisance amongst today’s online generation.
So what is hacking? It is the act of using specific tools and codes to gain unauthorized access to a personal or private network or computer. Mostly, this gets done to extract personal information from computers, with the motive to exploit the targeted people.
If you want to read more about hacking, you have come to the right place. Continue reading to find more information about hacking and how to prevent your vulnerable devices from getting hacked.
What Is Hacking?
Hacking is gaining illegal access to personal information about a person or a business. This act is done by coders and programmers known as hackers. This gets done to gather vital information about people, companies, or organizations to exploit them.
Sometimes, this information gets used by hackers as leverage against specific targets to blackmail them through coercion. Mostly, hackers do this for self-gain, like gaining money as ransom. Often, hackers hack systems to find out business and government secrets, with plans of revealing them to the public.
Hackers primarily use tools like software, programs, and codes that get used to gain access to the system using the internet and shared networks. Often, they will use trojans and viruses to damage the security firewall of a system, making it easier for them to hack it.
Types Of Hackers
There are quite a few types of hackers. The three most important ones are:
1. Black Hat hackers
We often hear news about hacking, especially the illegal stealing of private information. If this is done to exploit people for personal gain, you can say that black hat hackers are behind it.
These are the bad guys or villains of the hacking website hack hex scene. Their main focus is to exploit people or businesses for their gain, primarily monetary.
2. White Hat Hackers
White hat hackers, also known as ethical hackers, are the good guys of the hacking scene. These hackers typically associate themselves with governments and businesses to provide their services – for a price.
Their primary objective is to find various loopholes and vulnerabilities in the security systems of businesses and fix them from getting hacked. This is the reason why they are known as ethical hacking.
3. Grey Hat Hackers
Grey hat hackers straddle the lines between good and bad. While their intentions may be good, they take unethical approaches.
Their main objective is to find vital information about people, businesses, and even the government. They have the intention of exposing them to the public. Like Snowden, they act as vigilantes amongst hackers, often referred to as whistleblowers.
Devices Vulnerable To Hacking
Hacking codes and hacking software target various devices and applications connected to the internet. These are typically smart devices that can connect to the internet. Some of these devices and their vulnerabilities are:
1. Smart Devices
Smart devices like smartphones and computers are prone to get hacked the most. Since we use these two devices for connecting to the internet most of the time, they are the first ones in line to get hacked.
Computers and phones contain vital personal information like essential documents, email and social media passwords, and even banking information.
2. Webcams
If you want to exploit somebody and catch them red-handed in doing some activity, they do not want you to know, hacking a webcam can be a great idea.
The webcam of computers often gets hacked so that hackers can catch people doing illegal or sexual activities in their room where a computer or laptop is present.
3. Routers
Since you need the internet to conduct many of your day-to-day activities, hacking a router gives you full access to it.
A Hacktivist can place trackers and data miners in the router network and extract any user input information. This includes email and social media passwords, along with net banking information as well.
4. Email
Hacking an email has become pretty common because most websites require users to register using an email ID. So if your email gets hacked, script kiddies will get access to all registered websites of the user. This includes all your social media profiles and other websites and networks.
How To Prevent Getting Hacked
If you want to take the best steps to prevent your system from getting hacked by hacking techniques, we have some recommendations. They are:
1. Update Your System Software
Updating your system’s software, especially its OS and antivirus firewall programs, should be your first priority. These updates contain patches that fix loopholes and vulnerabilities in the system that hackers could hack. Therefore, constantly check for system updates and update them whenever available.
2. Have Different Passwords For Different Accounts
Have unique passwords for your email, social media, and net banking accounts. This is a great way to make hacking to the gate more difficult. Use combinations of letters, numbers, symbols, and capitalization to make it challenging to understand passwords.
3. HTTPS Encryption
Whenever you surf the internet, you might come across websites that do not have HTTPS encryption. We recommend not going to these websites since they might be scam websites. These websites can steal information stored in your browser cookies, like passwords, IP addresses, router information, and more.
4. Use A VPN
Using a VPN is a secure way to browse the internet because it masks your IP address and other network information from other websites and applications. Therefore, this can be a great way to protect all the devices connected to your networks, like your smartphones and laptops.
5. Install Antivirus Software
One of the most common “protection from hacking” tips that you have heard a million times by now is to install antivirus software. This hacking tool crossword can detect worms, data miners, and viruses in your system and remove them immediately.
Frequently Asked Questions:
Hacking scripts are unique codes and software that hackers develop to hack into systems. These codes are automated and only require a few commands to run them.
You can learn hacking from many tech institutions.
Kevin Mitnick is by far one of the most famous hackers in the world.
No, hacking is not an easy task.
Conclusion
Hacking has become pretty common in today’s internet generation since most data gets stored on the internet. Therefore, hackers exploit the system’s loopholes to get access to confidential information and exploit users for personal gain. However, ethical hackers are coming in to protect us from getting hacked.
To prevent your systems from getting hacked, install an antivirus, keep unique passwords, and use a VPN to stay safe from hacking attempts as much as possible.
If you want to learn more about hacking, we have other blogs that you should read and share with others!
Additional Reading:
TechrabQAZ
Arnab Das
Debamalya Mukherjee
Barsha Bhattacharya