Hacking (Illegally for the most part) one’s Social media account is a common act today. Just imagine the amount of personal information that lay bare on your social accounts in form of your conversations (Chats), Photos, Likes, Friends and much more. Today even in faking your life on social media - by making hyper-edited posts and quoting Plato, you unbeknown to the facts, leak your most critical asset, your Confidentiality of Data. I mentioned hacking one’s social account as a common act today as if only you do not live in a different paracosm, you must be aware of the staggering number of Cyber-Crimes, mostly sexual abuse, Blackmail, Harassing, bullying and Revenge Porn cases being reported daily.

When I sometimes code or talk braggadocious over hacking, my friends ask me to Hack, or even to teach them How to hack Social accounts (Mostly Instagram and Facebook for some folly reasons). There still exist people who believe hacking to be a green terminal with a flashing code process. Anyways, in this particular article, I am going to dissect some of the most common methods used by hackers to exploit you on the web. By understanding the Behind the scenes of Hacking in general, You can secure yourself by mitigating potential loopholes.

Phishing

This method is old school and I’m sure your teacher must have taught you about this one. But it is a hilarity that though being such on the old method, people still fall prey. This clearly Implies the lack of seriousness for Information security among common folks. A layman's definition of Phishing is a process of sending malicious links to the target via Email or any other medium, whereupon clicking on the link, the target is met with a login form (Or apposite to the motive of attack) that masquerades as a legit login page. When you enter your credentials and hit enter, Bingo! Your credentials safely reached the attacker. There is nothing farrago about this attack and neither about its countermeasures. Simple awareness, by avoiding clicks on Unknown links, Checking the website’s URL before typing the credentials and avoiding unsecured sites, you can ensure 70% security from a phishing attack. The remaining 30% is determined by the attacker, by his skills.

Brute Force

This method, again an old-school, is not commonly used today but is a large contributor to nefarious activities. It involves trying every possible password, or in simple terms, a hit and trial method. The attacker develops a script (A piece of code to automate a task), or if he’s being lazy, he can use thousands of scripts available blatantly over the internet and then he can simply pass your username and a file that contains a lot of passwords (I am talking millions). The script will try every password available in the file until it finds the correct one. As you might have guessed, this kind of approach seems naïve today but still yields results. This kind of attack requires large computing power and a lot of time and patience, so girls and your boyfriends are less likely to use this one for your accounts. Now, what are the possible ways to secure yourself from this attack? The answer lies in the very definition of a Brute Force attack. It said a hacker passes “a file that contains a lot of passwords” and then “try every password available in the file until it finds the correct one”. By avoiding common passwords like 12345678, qwerty, your name, I love you, your phone number, 666666 or something like that, you can ensure your security to a great extent. Try using a long password, like a phrase or a combination of characters, something like “”

P.S. (That is not my password).

Social Engineering

This, on my list, is the most effective yet least technical method of yielding credentials. Social Engineering is not merely a method but an entire branch of psychology where by using psychological tools like persuasion, Pretexting and simple mind tricks, one can victimize the target using least to no technical support. Now taking the vastness of Social Engineering into consideration, I will not be going through each and every aspect in detail but an overview. Feel Free to check out a detailed Article on social engineering here. Now an effective social Engineering attack starts with information gathering. Let us imagine a Hypothetical case, where on your Instagram bio, you mentioned your date of birth (Cake Murder/Landed on/Royal entry) and your favourite music band. For your followers, this is just a piece of ordinary information but for an attack, it is a potential gold. He waits for your birthday, and then sends you greetings in your mail. Something like this –

Hi there,

I hope you are doing fine and have a very happy birthday from an anonymous friend. I could not reach you in person, so here, I prepared a gift for you. A personalized collection of songs by your favourite music band, plus, something extra waiting for you. Click here to unveil your surprise.

Well I know I did a shitty job there but you got the point. He could have used other methods, any case that you can imagine. Possible risk mitigation tips? Stop revealing your data publicly. Without information, these attacks are as good as trash. But when enriched with even little data on you, they can wreak havoc.

Now there are many other ways but those mentioned above are the most common methods. But how likely is your account vulnerable to a hack, well that depends on your identity. If you are a politician or a sizzling hot girl, you simply top the list. But this fact does not falsify the threat for common folks, there is a threat and it is real. And the only way to protect yourself is through awareness.

Are Hacking methods that easy to make you worry?

Hacking, or simply mastery of the computer, is a difficult discipline to attain. Even the people in the tech sector find it hard to dive deep into Hacking concepts. It requires practice and patience. So we can conclude that hacking methods and their implementation are not an easy deal.