The A-Z of hacking

If you are one of my brethren in India, I will assume you are aware with the hacking of the national bank of baroda, in which consumer information was comprised and leaked on the dark web…..my my….horrendous?….shocking?….outrageous?…pick your adjectives….but is that all that is to hacking?

let me tell you some shocking data “roughly around 2200 cyberattacks occur each day worldwide”.Now thats concerning.And trust me,these cyberattacks are not influenza which our mothers can cure with “a drop of honeysyrup..nothing too special required”.These are not viruses which only the rich cats(ahem…thats a metaphor for rich humans..my bad)catch,it could be me,you,your friendly neighbour spiderman,his gf(who forgot him and smooched another guy),your drunk tenant,literally anyone.

The Oxford Learner’s Dictionary defines hacking as the activity of using computers to gain unauthorized access to data in another system or network.This crime is often carried out in search of valuable personal data,your office or institute’s personal data,to blackmail you for money,or to gain your banking credentials.

Now dont get me wrong,hacking can be both ethical and unethical.the kind which hurts is the latter one.There are three types of hackers-White hat hackers,Black hat hackers and grey hack hackers.now honestly even i dont see the sense of assigning them colors,but you and i are smarter than raging over that.White hat hackers usually are appointed by corporates to test their systems for security flaws.Think of it like asking a police officer to check if your safe or vault is secure enough.kind of like a double security.The black hat hackers are the red flags i have been yapping about.guys/gals who are upto no good and are not there to check your laptop.seriously.the grey hat hackers are the…cornball hackers.basically those who might hack your system,but lack guts to do something with it.its just a term high profile lawyers throw in court to save the guy lurking in your PC.

Now you might be thinking “well i dont have some ancient secret on my pc,why would i be worried?”well,well,well…whose gonna tell you?me,ofc(sighs in pity)my dear friend,your Laptop or PC is another you.Its quite like a body you use to live on a world called “Internet”.The sites you access,the links you click,the files you save,these are literally your digital identity.like your social security number.You might think your actions are boring,but thats not what hackers think.If you had to give me or some hacker your PC for even an hour,we could find your name,preferences,digital footprint(worse if you search something weird),contacts,location,adress,voice etc etc.You cant even imagine how disastrous it could be.Hackers can either sell your info to companies who with that info and customize what they show about their company on your phone accordingly.The hackers could even use the info to guess certain things bout you like credentials,pin code,passwords etc etc because it is default for humans to have a pattern in stuff we dont generally remember for a long time.Maybe you cant remember your password so you put it as your house name or your spouses name,and boom,i already know that if i hack u….aanddddd(dramatic drumroll)the cash in your bank…gone.And if you are unfortunate enough to save infos like pictures that are too private,or your companies secret,be ready to pay higher than you ever payed to your landlord.Thats the power they possess once hackers get an entry into your PC.

How to protect yourself you ask?then let me tell you something I have been telling my parents and relatives for ages

HAVE A STRONG PASSWORD!!!!!!!!!!!!

I mean seriously.What even is “12345”, “avengers assemble”, “I love my car”?????sorry to break it to you but such passwords take second to breakthrough.If you still think hackers manually think,then write down every combination they could think of and manually put it in the PC then….mehhhh….You are wrong my fellow. You dont really need to dig deep but just know that they possess a kind of software which is so smart that it can put every combination rapidly into the computer while the hacker lounges and sips his boba.and if you have such weak passwords,he will have cracked 200 accounts like yours in an hour.How to protect yourself?Create a long password.like really long.8 to 10 character.use lower case,upper case,special characters,number,throw in alphabet at random order.Now how to remember this?

Lets do an exercise.Think of one special event in your life.

Let take this as an example- “I bought my first car in 2026 @ the online store.”

or any other sentence like this.Then take the intitial character of each word.This turn the above sentence into “Ibmfci2026@tis”.Boom.That is gonna take ages for the software to crack as so many characters and the cases used are gonna open millions of possible combination.go on.make one in your head.the next time u need to remember your password,just recount this sentence.If you still feel unsure about your password strength then go on your search engine and type “password strength checker” and you would know exactly how much time it would take to crack it.adjust accordingly…

Phew one step done….

Next step,buy a proper firewall and antivirus software.Invest a bit now to prevent huge losses in future.Avoid clicking on links you dont recognize.Didnt sign up for the mail?delete it.Always click on the website only if you see a http ‘s’ in its address.that s is important.it stands for secure and is honestly a secure site.avoid giving cookies,give those only which are necessary….

Anddddd you are good to go!!I m proud of you if you have completed this steps.

Learned something?follow!until next time!

Photo by Kevin Ku on Unsplash