In this world of fast-growing technology, criminals have found new ways to exploit others. One of them will be cybercrime. Theft of Wi-Fi passwords is considered a cybercrime that doesn’t cause harm to a physical being, but its virtual form causes a violation of privacy. Hacking a Wi-Fi password is regarded as a crime.
It is a shame that nowadays, people can comfortably learn these petty techniques of hacking someone’s Wi-Fi passwords and use it without their consent. These sources only encourage cyber crimes to grow more and inflict people. It starts with small acts and petty tricks but slowly stimulates and leads to more extensive crimes. There is a need to stop these attacks. The institute teaches little to none to children about cyber knowledge and cyber security, so they cannot judge whether an action is wrong or right. We need to avoid such situations, and we as users can do it by spreading awareness about cybercrime. People need to know what cybercrime is, and they should be precautious about it.
Your Wi-Fi passwords or the router itself can get hacked easily without notice if you don’t take proper precautions. The possibility of getting your Wi-Fi hacked is very high. An estimated number suggests that every 39 sec a hacker commits cybercrime. Sometimes the main aim of a hacker isn’t just Wi-Fi theft but something much worse. If your Wi-Fi is getting hacked, there is a possibility that the hacker breaches your privacy. Alternatively, if you own a Wi-Fi but cannot access the device for some reason, use this Wi-Fi password stealer. This is a list of the ten best Wi-Fi password stealer apps for Android. A word of caution: Use these apps only if it’s important for you to login into your Wi-Fi networking device. These are some fun apps, and you should never use them to cause harm to someone else’s network. It can have serious repercussions.
Table of Contents
What’s exactly hacking?
Hacking a system or a networking device means “gaining unauthorized access to data of your mobile, or it can be your system.” Why does someone even inherit hacking? The main reason for anyone to hack is to steal all the private details or important information or data of a corporation and leak it. They hack all our details and use them for money transferring, loans, etc. These incidents became more frequent after mobile and internet banking started and became more popular. During this developing technology, the potential for monetary gain through hacking has increased with the expansion of mobile phones.
This is not the sole reason; there are many other reasons that the hackers want to, to some extent, disrupt services driven by purpose – Hacktivism, idealism, and political motives.
What are the major common Hacking Methods?
The most common hacks are:
- Phishing could also be a commonly known hacking technique where a hacker creates a reproduction of some website to steal money or users’ private information.
- UI Redress is almost like Phishing. It refers to a hacking method where a hacker creates a fake or hidden interface with unsuitable content.
- Denial of Service (DoS\DDoS), one of the foremost common sorts of attacks, DoS or DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service), is employed to disable or crash a server. Hackers generally do that by sending tonnes of server requests via bots.
- DNS spoofing or hackers employ DNS cache poisoning to infect DNS servers and redirect internet traffic to a uniform but fraudulent website.
- SQL Injection may be a technique during which hackers place malicious code in SQL statements and are ready to access and control sensitive databases.
- Brute force is considered one of the only methods to grant access. The brute force could also be a hacking technique where a hacker tries numerous combinations of usernames and passwords until he’s ready to push into the target system. Mostly, the motive is to know the sensitive user or business information.
- Your router may need to be hacked, and you don’t even know it. By employing a way called DNS (Domain Name Server) hijacking, hackers can breach the security of your home Wi-Fi and potentially cause you a superb deal of harm. They’ll redirect your traffic to an internet site traveled by them, causing you to unwittingly give your MasterCard number or Facebook login credentials to a criminal. Employing a free and web-based online router checker service to confirm whether the home network is secure also ensures the service you select is from a trustful and reputable cyber security brand.
There are many ways it can lead to a grave attack and harm like:
- Location and personal information can get leaked.
- Hog your network, making it slower and useless for you.
- Spy on your work, and you have access to a camera connected to the device with Wi-Fi.
- They can access illegal content through your network.
- Install malware in your router through Wi-Fi to hack your network completely.
- Attack others using your network and put you on the suspect.
- Can get access to bank account details.
It is easy to realize it, as the first sign of your Wi-Fi being compromised is a slow network or decrease in Wi-Fi speed. You will notice your Wi-Fi working slower than usual and face difficulty in accessing websites. You won’t be able to open WebPages or load videos properly. To avoid such a situation, you should be aware if your Wi-Fi password is compromised or not. If this happens, you should take action emergently.
To know if your Wi-Fi is getting hacked, you should know how you get hacked. The most common way is guessing the password. Wi-Fi passwords with weak security and password are easy to predict as a hacker can look up the default password linked with a given type of router and use it to access countless devices. They can also breach your Wi-Fi security by using a technique called Domain Name server hijacking.
Possible Ways To Hack
Most websites claim that they have free tools and resources to hack Wi-Fi passwords, but most are illegal. Before hacking a Wi-Fi password, remember that not all Wi-Fi connections are secured, and it’s quite unfair and pretty much everywhere.
Trying to break into a Wi-Fi network is fraudulent and violent. It’s the same as plugging an extension cord into someone else’s house or drinking their water from the faucet.
The vast majority of Wi-Fi networks can be breached. If the conditions are right, it’s even simple. There are countless approaches, but they all come down to one of two things: brute force or social engineering.
● Brute Force Method
One of the most common ways to hack a Wi-Fi password is the “brute force method,” which entails trying many passwords until one works. While network management software can be quite expensive, there are some options available for free. Air-cracking, Rainbow Crack, Burp Suite, and Metasploit are just a few examples of free software that will take care of that for you. Again, proceed with caution.
This method is only worth trying if your targeted party has changed the SSID from the router default.
Need background on how it is possible to hack someone’s password successfully by using brute force? Then Read On!
WPS provides access via a pre-shared PIN. This PIN has eight digits, and there are 100,000,000 possible password combinations with these digits. Forcing one pin at a time would take 1157 days in the worst-case scenario. We can take advantage of some WPS protocol flaws to expedite the process.
The PIN’s eighth digit is a validation for the previous seven digits rather than a PIN component. As a result, the number of possible combinations drops from 100,000,000,000 to 10,000,000. This rapidly deducts the attack count to 115.7 days to test all feasible varieties, or it can come down to 57.8 days to test 50% solely based on a rate of 1 PIN per second. Practically it comes down to 58 days. It is faster than to crack a robust WPA PSK, but it is still not fast enough to be considered a viable attack vector. Another drawback in the WPS protocol can be controlled to reduce these spinning times even remotely.
PINs are sent in two halves when presented for verification: the first four digits and the last four digits. Once the two halves have been verified independently, they are reassembled and put back together again.
Due to the reduction in the keyspace, what would otherwise be a much stronger key now has a major weakness. Only 10,000 possible combinations exist in the first half of the PIN, so guessing them all would only take 2.7 hours at our current rate of 1 PIN per second.
Due to the checksum value, the second half of the PIN only has 1,000 possible combinations, making it impossible to guess all of them in under 16 minutes. Going from four months to three hours to test every conceivable combination demonstrates how the WPS protocol fails to take advantage of the protection provided by an eight-digit PIN.
This is one of the main reasons why WPS is a weak link in your Wi-Fi security chain.
● Social Engineering Method
Hacking includes social engineering, but the emphasis is on psychological manipulation rather than technical expertise or software flaws. Ethical hackers popularly use this method. They aren’t necessarily used to hack Wi-Fi passwords.
You can deceive someone into simply providing you with personal information, such as usernames and passwords. To do this, call the person on an untraceable phone line and pretend to be their Internet service provider (ISP), asking them to change their password due to “suspicious activity.”
You can then expect them to believe you by sending a fake ISP sign-in page, where they will enter their credentials, and you are welcomed to have access.
Though it seems like a plain felony, and some people even let it go thinking someone is just borrowing their Wi-Fi, it can lead to massive attacks on people’s lives. Ignoring such acts can only inflict immense harm. There are many ways you can secure your network and guard your privacy like:
- Pick a strong password with symbols and numbers to make it hard to guess, and keep a different password every time after changing the router or network.
- Change your router’s username and password right after activating it, whether the router is new or old.
- Use a router that is WPA2-enabled, which safeguards your router from unwanted access.
- Disable WPS, as it can give access to your network to anyone who can physically reach the router.
- Update your router’s firmware to keep it safe from any vulnerability.
- Use cyber security tools.
- Use a VPN to keep your privacy encrypted.
Wi-Fi is a crucial part of people’s life now, but it can also be a tool to harm others. We need to take precautions to avoid any harm. It should be your topmost priority to safeguard your network from any inflict. But if your Wi-Fi passwords has already been compromised, there are still few ways you can fix it.
Following the steps given as follows can help you recover your network:-
- Change your router’s name and password used to access the admin page.
- Change wireless network passwords as well, and make it complex.
- Update the software of the router.
- Contact your internet service provider regarding the situation and get your device scanned for any malware.
If you face hacking, you should immediately report the crime. Reporting the crime will ensure that such practice slows down to the point of its end.
There won’t be any cybercrime in a perfect world, but we live in this world that is imperfect and difficult to survive in. To be able to survive this world, we need to evolve ourselves and grow stronger. Being cautious is probably the best cure to everything, but being aware of the crimes and having the knowledge to refute them is what everyone needs. And if anyone ever encounters hacking, the first step should be to report the crime and stop it from advancing.
People need to be aware of what cybercrime is and how they can handle such situations. Knowing how much a hacker can cause harm, how you can avoid hacking, and how you can recover from hacking is now a major need.
There are many tools to crack the password. Nevertheless, it is not recommendable as anything up to educational purpose is reasonable beyond might term as illegal. This article has been presented with the same intention.
After all, “One single vulnerability is all an attacker needs.” – Window Snyder.
