Current Events > How does one hack your account?

(+) Yeah! (+)

One of my accounts on another site was hacked. Some russian guy I think, how would somebody like that get a hold of my account?

I know of phishing but that's not possible here, I haven't been phished.
My password is not a simple dumb password like 12345, password5, etc....
I haven't told my password to anybody.


I always thought that whenever an account got 'hacked' it's just a guy who figured out your password for some reason and that real hacking like you see in the movies is not real. Or at least it's too hard to actually hack an account.


How else could anybody go into my account?

Ask Gavi.
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CrimsonAngeI posted...

Ask Gavi.

who's that?

There are some former gamefaqs account hackers still on this site, back in the day it was more of a problem

I know people would ask security questions via aim and people would answer them truthfully.
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You probably either have spyware/malware on your computer *or* the domain service provider does. Websites get hacked all the time. Either way, any sufficiently bored and/or well supplied hacker can get into almost any system given time. The only variable that is relevant is patience.
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Any half-wit with access to internet can hack. Preventing it is leagues harder.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rQPdWwv3k8
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using a shared password across multiple sites.
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Same password is the most obvious culprit. If not that, info sharing between 2 accounts (for example email and a pay for service) could do it. If one has bad security then the other is compromised. Social engineering would be my third guess, like if some dude said he was "fixing your computer" or if you unwittingly listed your dog's name, mother's maiden name, etc publicly a bot could scrub that info to give someone access to an account. You could also have some sort of packet sniffer on your PC.

Honestly "strong" passwords are a bit overrated, it's more important to be security conscious overall.
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There are also other methods such as XSS if the site isn't adequately secured from that.
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Yeah, but with XSS you still need information back and forth from what I understand.
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What exactly do you mean by that?
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As in the client needs to send/request specific info for the server to send to be intercepted.
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No, an XSS attack might be an attacker putting a piece of javascript onto a site that sends the victim's cookies to the attacker. The attacker can then use those cookies to bypass logging in to the victim's account. It doesn't really require any interaction on the victim's part. The script just needs to run on their browser.
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P4wn4g3 posted...

Same password is the most obvious culprit. If not that, info sharing between 2 accounts (for example email and a pay for service) could do it. If one has bad security then the other is compromised. Social engineering would be my third guess, like if some dude said he was "fixing your computer" or if you unwittingly listed your dog's name, mother's maiden name, etc publicly a bot could scrub that info to give someone access to an account. You could also have some sort of packet sniffer on your PC.

Honestly "strong" passwords are a bit overrated, it's more important to be security conscious overall.

Is there anything I can do to check if I'm safe?

megamanzero1000 posted...

P4wn4g3 posted...

Same password is the most obvious culprit. If not that, info sharing between 2 accounts (for example email and a pay for service) could do it. If one has bad security then the other is compromised. Social engineering would be my third guess, like if some dude said he was "fixing your computer" or if you unwittingly listed your dog's name, mother's maiden name, etc publicly a bot could scrub that info to give someone access to an account. You could also have some sort of packet sniffer on your PC.

Honestly "strong" passwords are a bit overrated, it's more important to be security conscious overall.

Is there anything I can do to check if I'm safe?

A good idea would be making sure that each of your accounts have different passwords as well as making sure that the answers to your accounts' security questions isn't publicly available information.
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You DDOS the mainframe and hack into the matrix using the information superhighway to overpower their motherboard
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