Ways Hackers Steal Your Password
Phishing attempts are one of the most common ways that hackers can get your password. It’s a social engineering tactic where they attempt to trick you into providing your login credentials. Phishing often takes place through emails or messages, perhaps telling you that you missed a payment or your credit card will be charged soon. In a panic, you contact them to resolve the issue, sometimes not realizing you gave away your information to a scammer until it’s too late.
This isn’t always successful, but attackers may attempt to log in to your accounts by trying random common passwords and seeing if anything hits.
Hackers test databases or lists of stolen credentials against multiple accounts to see if there’s a match. If you use the same password across different sites, these hackers have a good chance of finding a match.
Another way is to get you to download malware onto your device, which is capable of capturing everything you type, including your passwords.
This is a trial-and-error method of stealing passwords by employing an algorithm that attempts to crack passwords by trying every possible combination.
This is when hackers are physically able to find your passwords that are written down or stored insecurely. Perhaps they break into your home and steal a list of passwords on a notepad in your office desk drawer. Or, they find a way to use malware to hack into your password storage software. This is scary as those are meant to be trusted, but it can happen.
