What type of activities do you participate in online? Most people bank, check in with their friends and family on multiple social media sites, shop, participate in forums … the list goes on.
But just how safe are your accounts? How safe is your identity?
I don't normally go into underlying details and minutiae when discussing an issue as I'm going to here, but I couldn't help myself. With mounting security breaches, hundreds of millions of users across the nation and the globe are now much more vulnerable to cyberthreats such has cyber-ransom and fraud. In fact, in early June, not only were multiple social media accounts belonging to Mark Zuckerberg hacked, but so was North Korea’s version of Facebook, called "Best Korea's Social Network.”
If you are scared, good; you should be. If you aren’t scared, then feel free to continue using “password” as your password for all of your online accounts, and keep reading because even though some hackers might simply spam your Facebook account, others have the ability to get away with much more than just thinning out your Friends list. For instance, one single stolen password ended up costing Bangladesh’s Central Bank $81 million after the new-age robbers were able to hack into the bank’s secure messaging system earlier this year.
Fortunately, we can learn from others’ mistakes, as well as learning from the enemy. So let’s take a look at the ways in which your password can be stolen.
Know Thy Enemy
There are three main ways that cybercriminals can gain access to your password. First, it is important to understand “encryption” and how it works. When you create a username and password for your online account, the company stores that data in their server and is responsible for keeping your account information secure. Companies generally do this by encrypting your account information, which can be done by using one or both of the following encryption methods:
1. Hashing
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