Password Cracking: Basic Techniques and Tools

Internet security, ensuring reliable protection of personal data, preventing leaks - these are the issues that are extremely relevant for the modern user. We can talk about this endlessly, constantly pointing out the importance of using advanced security methods. And all this is not empty words. The risks are really very serious. Today, hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Internet intruders are conducting their illegal activities on the network, trying to penetrate the user's personal life, take possession of his secrets, money. If we analyze this whole situation, it turns out that most of these attacks begin with an elementary attempt to hack a user password. Despite the fact that modern security technologies have made great strides, hackers still actively use such penetration methods, because they give the best results in practice.

By such a term as password hacking, we mean unauthorized processes of decrypting user information, with the help of which Internet intruders can gain access to people's personal accounts. To achieve this goal, specialized software or a set of tools is often used that can systematically check possible combinations or find them, thereby bypassing the provided security measures.

In today's review, we will dwell in detail on what password hacking is and why it is so dangerous for a modern user. We will consider a number of methods that are most often used by hackers to gain access to personal user information. We will introduce you to the tools that are used in the implementation of these attacks. We will also describe in detail the current methods of protection, following which you can minimize the risk of password hacking by Internet intruders.

Running a little ahead, we note that all these methods are quite simple to implement. They will not require any special knowledge or practical skills from you. But at the same time, they will be highly effective and will help ensure the most stable, reliable and safe work on the Internet even in the presence of high risks typical of the present time.

Hacking passwords: why it is important not to neglect such a danger

Hacking user passwords involves gaining unauthorized access to the data of a particular person, or even to the system as a whole, by selecting the appropriate combination, stealing data, decrypting. In parallel with the development of protection methods, the attacks themselves are being improved, as well as the methods and tools designed to implement them. Thus, modern Internet attackers actively use artificial intelligence technologies, automation, graphics processors (GPU) and many other advanced solutions in their practice. Innovative malware that infects user devices and reads all the passwords used on them is also actively appearing. A striking example of such applications is Redline and ClipBanker, which have found widespread use among modern hackers.

If you study the Google Cloud Threat Horizons Report for last year, it turns out that almost 90% of all cases of compromise of user accounts are associated with theft or guessing of personal passwords. Given the high efficiency of such attacks, attackers are making them more and more targeted. In parallel with this, there is a systematic transition from hacking the system itself to hacking identity.

The fact is that if your passwords end up in the hands of attackers, even those that provide access to completely insensitive information, there is still an extremely high risk of serious privacy issues. By gaining access to even very narrow information, Internet attackers will use this vulnerability to expand their attack, covering as much personal data as possible. As a result, the risk of leaks of very important information, financial problems and general negative impact on the user's daily life increases significantly.

It is difficult to predict in advance how an Internet attacker will use the stolen data. Alternatively, they can use them to gain access to any of your other accounts. This will be especially relevant in cases where the same credentials or variations are used when connecting to different accounts or sites. Let's say that in one account you use the password "Work1", in another - "Work2", in the third - "Work3". In this case, the risk of hacking all three of your accounts will be very, very high.

And what happens if a hacker cracks the password to your email. As a result, he will be able to reset absolutely all the passwords on your other accounts, as linked to this email. As a result, you will not be able to connect to any service. It is also possible that after hacking your password, attackers will steal your identification data, gain access to your bank accounts, blackmail you, or even sell the hacked information on DarkNet.

As you can see, unfortunately, nothing good can come from hacking passwords. This means that it is in your interests to delve into this problem in detail and provide reliable protection for yourself.

Variants of modern password attacks

Here we follow the rule: “Forewarned is forearmed”. If we analyze all these hacking methods that are actively used by modern Internet attackers, then initially they can be divided into 2 large categories:

1. Online attacks. Hackers implement such an impact in real time on the server. This attack is carried out directly on websites or applications with which the user interacts. Here, hackers systematically enter different variations of passwords in an attempt to pick up the option that a person uses when connecting. Such methods in practice turn out to be quite slow and, if desired, they can be easily tracked. But still, if users neglect basic security elements, if there is no captcha, multifactor authentication, IP restrictions, then the efficiency in practice is still quite high.
2. Offline attacks. Involves the initial theft of hashes with their subsequent processing and extraction of the necessary information. In this case, Internet attackers receive a database in advance that will contain password hashes, and then they will work with them locally until they receive the desired information. Due to such remote work, such actions are outside the competence of modern detection systems, which increases the effectiveness of such attacks in practice. Here, hackers do not need to comply with restrictions on the number of attempts, the speed of work, exceeding which could entail additional attention from the security system. Moreover, they can easily use advanced and resource-intensive methods and tools, while remaining completely unnoticed.

Modern Internet attackers often combine online and offline attacks, increasing the efficiency of their work and minimizing potential risks to themselves.

TOP most common and popular password hacking methods

To learn how to resist the actions of Internet attackers, it is important to understand what methods they can use to steal your personal passwords. Unfortunately, there are quite a few options for such attacks. Here are just a few methods that modern hackers use quite actively in practice:

• Fishing. This word literally translated from English sounds like “fishing”. And this reveals the very essence of this attack. In particular, it resembles something similar to catching gullible fish. Only instead of fish, gullible users are caught on the hook, and malicious activity extends not to a river, lake, but to a huge digital ocean. Despite the fact that phishing is one of the oldest and one can even say classic hacker attacks, it still remains one of the most effective. The fact is that with its help the password can be obtained directly from the user. Here we are not talking about technical, but about the so-called “social” hacking, which allows you to bypass even the most advanced encryption systems. Here, fake emails, those sites and messengers that users most often use in their practice are used. That is, Internet scammers disguise themselves as relevant services, organizations that are well known to people and try to lure out their personal data. In practice, fake bank websites or calls from their managers, fake letters from support services, etc. are most often used. It turns out that the gullible user does not notice any trick and falls for the hackers' hook himself, transferring his confidential information, such as the same passwords, bank card numbers. It is noteworthy that phishing does not require any complex infrastructure, hardware or software. Do not fall for the bait of such scammers, keep your confidential information a big secret and do not fall for their tricks.
• Brute force, also known as a selection attack. In this case, Internet attackers use the appropriate software in practice. With its help, they try to guess the credentials in order to connect to a particular system literally by trial and error, that is, they try all possible password options until access to a particular account is open. Brute force is performed using powerful software that processes several different combinations of credentials. At first glance, it may seem that an attempt to guess a user's password by trial and error gives low results in practice. But it is important to understand that the work is carried out under the control of advanced software that can process trillions of password combinations in a matter of minutes. In practice, such an attack gives good results when users use short passwords that do not contain special characters. Often, these are ordinary words. But if you use long random phrases supplemented with numbers, symbols, combining uppercase and lowercase letters, then you will not be able to crack them using Brute force.
• Password spraying. In this case, we are talking about an attack with password spraying. When implementing such an idea, Internet scammers use a list of the most frequently used passwords as the main data. Their goal will be to gain access to various accounts related to the same domain. Most of these lists contain fairly weak passwords that are common among the user audience. Alternatively, this could be a set of consecutive numbers in direct or reverse order ("123456789" or "987654321"), the words "password", "password", etc. Special tools are used here that allow hackers to enter these lists, as well as use several passwords at the same time to hack. If we compare it with the same brute force attack, then here a huge number of variations will not be systematically sorted out. Mostly, one or several of the most popular passwords are used, but they are directed to a large number of accounts. Thanks to this, Internet attackers manage to avoid blocking by the system due to the large number of unsuccessful login attempts.
• Credential stuffing. This is an attack with the substitution of credentials. It is also aimed at obtaining information about the user's password. It is based on the fact that many people neglect basic security requirements and reuse the same combinations of words, letters, and symbols for different accounts. During such an attack, Internet fraudsters use a set of credentials in order to simultaneously compromise several accounts. In most cases, the initial information used here is the data that they managed to obtain as a result of public leaks. That is, if a hacker has authorization data for a specific user from any other services, during such an attack he will try to launch them on all of this person's accounts in order to gain access to more important information for him, hacking those accounts that already have material value. That is, credential stuffing is an attack on users who use the same passwords when working with different accounts.
• Dictionary. These are so-called dictionary attacks. In essence, this method is quite similar to brute force, as it involves a systematic enumeration of common dictionary words and phrases in order to compromise user accounts. In this case, hackers rely on a list of words that, according to statistics, most often contain password phrases. After that, a special password cracking program is connected, which will enter various combinations of words into certain user accounts in order to obtain information about the password. We would like to draw attention to the fact that, unlike the previous option, here not only words can be used, but also special characters, such as numbers.
• Rainbow tables. This is an attack using so-called "rainbow tables". In this case, hackers use a special table in order to crack password hashes. By the way, password hashes are This is a special code that turns ordinary, easy-to-read and understand passwords into a string of unreadable characters. Such encryption is carried out directly at the level of a particular service or company. It turns out that they will not store user passwords, but their hashes directly. And if this site or service falls under a hacker attack, the intruders will still not be able to find out the personal passwords of users. But in order to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of such hacks, hackers have created these very rainbow tables. During such an attack, Internet fraudsters collect a list of potential passwords, often consisting of the most frequently used combinations of words. Then they run a hash function, with the help of which all these passwords are converted into hash codes. In this case, they save both the plaintext password and the hashes from the same password, saving them in a rainbow table. Subsequently, the password hashes are reduced to a level that allows you to form a chain of codes for subsequent use and attempts to find a match. As soon as a suitable hash value is found, the hacker will automatically reveal the password and will be able to compromise the user account. Practice shows that only those systems where hashes are supplemented with random data before encryption will be resistant to such actions by Internet attackers.

Hackers are becoming more sophisticated every day, honing their skills. Quite often, they use hybrid attacks, which involve a combination of different options for influencing weak user passwords. Thus, in practice, a combination of brute force and dictionary attacks is most often used. In order to modify them, special characters, dates can also be added here, and registers are changed. Such methods, unfortunately, give good results for Internet attackers in practice. And this means that you should definitely not neglect the security of your work on the Internet. It is a mistake to believe that you and your personal data are of no value to fraudsters — attacks are launched on complete strangers, regardless of who they are, what niche they work in, what income they have, etc.

The Most Common Hacker Tools for Cracking Passwords

Modern Internet attackers are armed not only with various methods, but also with tools that they use to implement their plans. By the way, today there are quite a few fairly common utilities that are used when performing various studies on the network. But at the same time, they have also become reliable tools in the hands of hackers. With their help, you can perform offline attacks, automatically checking a huge number of combinations of letters, words, numbers and symbols in an attempt to crack a user password. In particular, the following tools have become most widely used in practice:

1. JTR (John the Ripper). This is an open-source tool that has found the widest application in practice. Its distinctive feature is the ability to work with a huge range of hashes. It has become most widespread in the Linux environment. It is capable of automatically recognizing extensions and algorithms through special plugins.
2. Cain and Abel. This utility is oriented towards a Windows device and uses a graphical user interface. In practice, it has found wide application among novice hackers. It can be used to implement a brute force attack, influence hashes, decode, intercept network traffic, and a number of other fairly common attacks.
3. Hashcat. This tool is oriented towards a graphical user interface. It supports over 200 hashing algorithms, including such rather narrow ones as bcrypt, SHA, NTLM, and a number of others. Practical application shows that Hashcat is one of the fastest and most flexible tools for implementing brute force, which allows using a variety of modes, be it dictionary, hybrid, combinator, etc.
4. THC Hydra. The action of this tool involves an attack on logins in real time using protocols such as FTP, HTTP, RDP, etc. In practice, they are most often used in online attacks where the automation of entering credentials is provided.
5. Redline Stealer, Raccoon, Vidar. Stealers that are quite common in modern practice, capable of stealing user passwords directly from browsers, as well as e-mail, FTP clients. For their mass distribution, such malicious software as Trojans, exploits that identify weak points in software, spam mailings are used.
6. Ophcrack. The operation of this tool is based on rainbow tables, as well as the use of a user graphical interface. With its help, you can implement a fairly quick hack of Windows passwords, especially in fairly old systems that do not use additional characters to improve security.

Modern techniques in password cracking

All those methods for cracking passwords that we described above, by and large, can be attributed to the classic solutions used by modern hackers. In order to increase their efficiency and effectiveness, Internet attackers have learned to connect additional, more advanced tools and techniques to them. In particular, we are talking about the following possible options:

• Artificial intelligence. As generative neural networks began to develop, hackers began to gradually expand their tools, connecting language models that allow them to predict user actions with high accuracy when creating passwords. Thanks to this, the possible options for brute-forcing passwords have significantly decreased, the hacking time has decreased, and the efficiency has increased. Leaked password databases are often used as a basis for machine learning, portraits of individual user groups are compiled, and the most effective approaches are selected for each of them.
• Session token attacks. Even if users use a fairly complex password, multi-factor authentication, hackers can still crack their password. In this case, they aim to steal an access token, perhaps using a malicious browser extension. As a result, they open a login session and use these capabilities for subsequent actions. This solution requires a review of the security system, in particular, its shift from ensuring the security of the password itself to more global control over all sessions and cookies.
• Bypassing multi-factor authentication. Using several levels of protection can significantly reduce the risk of hacking, or at least force an Internet fraudster to abandon his idea due to the increased complexity and cost of its implementation. However, hackers have recently learned to bypass MFA using so-called fatigue attacks, social engineering tools, token interception, and phishing on access codes. Expanding additional security levels will help significantly increase the resistance of your accounts to such actions. As an option, along with identification via SMS messages, it is also recommended to use biometrics, FIDO2 devices.

All this allows us to confidently state that threats are becoming more and more real, that absolutely anyone can become a victim of password hacking. How can we resist this? What should be used to minimize such risks?

Modern methods of protection against password hacking

To counteract the actions of Internet intruders, modern users can use the following measures:

1. Use access keys where possible.
2. Unique and strong passwords.
3. Multi-factor authentication.
4. No public Wi-Fi networks
5. Resistance to social engineering attacks.

We will consider all these elements in more detail so that each of you can implement them independently in your own practice.

Use access keys where possible

Access keys are a fairly new modification technology, with the help of which users will be able to connect to their accounts on the network without directly entering a password. In this case, a person does not need to come up with an access code themselves. The system will automatically generate the appropriate keys on the user's device, password manager or browser when you need it. That is, you will no longer have to worry about your passwords being weak, that you accidentally use the same combination on different sites or repeat the same combination after a while.

Access keys are initially distinguished by maximum reliability. They cannot be compromised, at least not as easily as hackers have learned to do with classic passwords. That is, today, access keys are one of the most effective and secure authentication methods for users when creating and subsequently working with accounts.

Today, this method is quite new. It has not yet received widespread use on various sites and applications. That is, you can use it only on those sites where this option is initially provided. But still, with a high degree of probability, the number of such platforms will gradually increase, since the technologies are truly advanced and worthy of the attention of all those who are concerned about ensuring the security of work on the network.

Use only unique and reliable passwords

It can rightly be said that this topic is as old as the world. Everyone and everywhere talks about the need to use reliable and secure passwords, but, nevertheless, there are still many people who neglect all these requirements and current standards. Therefore, once again, we strongly recommend that when choosing passwords, take into account the latest modern techniques that are relevant for this area. This is what will prevent hacking or guessing the corresponding combination of characters.

One of the most common problems when creating passwords is the use of personal information in them, whether it is a date of birth or another event known to many, the nickname of a pet, city or street of residence. If a hacker decides to even superficially study the portrait of his "victim" immediately before the attack, then with a high degree of probability he will detect this entire formation. This means that he will not even have to strain himself much to gain access to your accounts.

Yes, creating complex passwords is quite a difficult task, but you can significantly simplify it by using special generators. With their help, you can always get a reliable and unique code that will be difficult for a hacker to guess. But not all users have a positive attitude to this, since the generated passwords will be very difficult to remember, and writing them down in a file or on a piece of paper near the computer significantly reduces security indicators.

You can solve this problem by using a password manager. They will keep your passwords under control, follow the current requirements for their creation, and eliminate reuse for certain accounts. That is, with their help you will get really high-quality and reliable passwords for all your connections to the network, but at the same time ensure their safe storage. The only thing you will need to remember is the so-called master password - one to connect to the entire manager.

Another interesting solution for today is password phrases. Perhaps, for you, their use will be the most convenient for ensuring high security of work on the Internet.

Configuring multi-factor authentication

In today's review, we have already talked about multi-factor authentication more than once, since this is one of the key rules for ensuring high security rates when working on the Internet. This technique should be used when working with most accounts. Its essence is that along with using a login and password at the authentication stage, you will need to additionally provide for a number of other measures, such as confirmation by SMS, email, biometrics, etc.

It turns out that even if an Internet attacker manages to get your password, they still will not be able to connect to the account, since they will not be able to pass additional authentication stages. Yes, such actions significantly complicate your personal connection to your accounts, but, on the other hand, you minimize the likelihood of compromising your own network accounts, as well as all the negative consequences associated with them.

Avoid using public Wi-Fi networks

This is another key rule that is constantly discussed everywhere, but, nevertheless, users still actively use public Wi-Fi networks in the same restaurants, hotels, shopping centers, train stations. And it doesn't matter whether you want to connect to an account that doesn't carry any serious value for a hacker or to your personal account on a banking service. We've already talked about how modern Internet attackers have learned to exploit even the smallest mistakes and vulnerabilities to achieve their goals.

Let's repeat once again: public Wi-Fi makes your data extremely vulnerable to interception using a so-called "man-in-the-middle" (MITM) attack. Here, hackers intercept a stream of data that will be sent between two people in a poorly protected environment. If you don't connect to such Wi-Fi networks, you will significantly improve your immunity to such attacks.

Increasing resistance to social engineering attacks

Social engineering is a fairly common method of obtaining user passwords today. Here we are not talking about direct hacking, but about the fact that people, under the influence of external persuasion, themselves disclose confidential data. We have already described such a method as phishing above. That is, in this case, your task will be to ensure your own resistance to such actions by Internet fraudsters.

The easiest way here is not to fall for tricks, check the information several times, especially if it requires specifying certain personal data. It is also not recommended to follow unfamiliar links, especially those you received without a corresponding request, because this is fraught with the possibility of getting malware on your device.

That is, do not give hackers even the slightest chance to confuse you, deceive you and force you to give out important data. Approach your work on the Internet consciously and carefully.

Let's sum it up

Unfortunately, today there is no single universal method that can provide users with the highest possible security indicators for working on the Internet. Moreover, as soon as something new and reliable appears, hackers intensify their efforts and begin to look for a way to bypass such restrictions. That is, this area is highly dynamic, requires users to pay utmost attention, as well as a comprehensive approach to ensuring their own security, including increasing the resistance of passwords to hacking.

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