Blog 8. 11/13/2011

This week in class we talked about hackers stealing people's passwords to various things. We talked about cracking in class, which is the process of recovering passwords from data that has been stored in or transmitted by a computer system. We discussed different ways that passwords are stored. One of the ways is in databases that describe who you are. Passwords are also stored as a one way function. Passwords can also be encrypted, some of which are picture based. In class we also talked about the anonymous attack. The anonymous attack is when people hack your password because either it has a weak encryption, they use guessing, they use the dictionary method, or they use brute force. Identifiable attacks on a password were also discussed in class. Examples of identifiable attacks are social engineering, dumpster diving, wiretapping, and shoulder surfing. Social Engineering can be pretexting, phishing, or baiting. We also discussed Kevin Mitnick, who is one of the most infamous hackers. There are three factors that determine how fast a hacker can get to your data. 1. Length/complexity of password 2. Speed of PC 3. Speed of internet connection.