Wednesday, June 27, 2012

No you haven't been "HACKED!!"


    


People on Facebook need to do a little reasearch and learn what Hacking, Cracking, and Hijacking is. 99% of the time someone says their Facebook was "Hacked" the term is miss used to mean that someone other then themselves posted a status on their account. The only way this can happen is if you have in one way or another given that person access to your account. In most cases you left your account logged in on a computer where others openly have access to it or you gave someone your password. The last senario is you have a bad password and someone guesses it. I promise you no one that you know has the knowledge or ability to crack Facebook's servers and database to gain access to your account. They could use social engineering to figure out what the password is through you or your friends but they aren't going to brute force or gain access to your account in an actual technical manor. Facebook's security is too good for that. Even if they were able to break in all of the login information is encrypted. Think about this logically no one that is skilled enough to gain access to your account by cracking Facebook and decrypt your login information is going to waste their time to "Hack" into your account and post a couple stupid messages while taking a chance that they by illegally obtaining information would be arrested for that action.

Now what is hacking? and what is Cracking?

"A hacker is a person who is proficient with computers and/or programming to an elite level where they know all the in's and out's of a system. There is NO illegality involved with being a hacker.
cracker is a hacker who uses their proficiency for personal gains outside of the law. EX: stealing data, changing bank accounts, distributing viruses etc.
What the hacker does with their knowledge of systems within the definition of the law is what defines them as a hacker vs a cracker. It's then safe to say that all crackers are hackers, but not all hackers are crackers. This is an important distinction.
The term cracker and hacker are used interchangeably (albeit incorrectly) largely due to the ignorance of the general populace, especially the media."  Source

What is social engineering?

"Social engineering, in the context of security, is understood to mean the art of manipulating people into performing actions or divulging confidential information.[1]While it is similar to a confidence trick or simple fraud, it is typically trickery or deception for the purpose of information gathering, fraud, or computer system access; in most cases the attacker never comes face-to-face with the victims." Source

Now the last thing I will talk about is Account Hijacking. This is when someone or something (in most cases an app you yourself added to your Facebook account) has taken over your account and is posting to your profile and you have no control of it. There is a partial Hijacking where you can login and still have access to your account. There is also a total Hijacking where your password has been changed and you are locked out completely. 

The easiest way to prevent this from happening is to:
A. Don't leave your self logged in on a device others you don't trust have access to.
B. Don't share your passwords with ANYONE. 
C. Make a password over ten characters with Upper Case, Lower Case Alphabetical characters as well as Numbers and special characters if possible.
 D. Don't add ANY Facebook apps to your Profile. Anything that says it can tell you who visited your profile those are a lie and can't access that information because Facebook it's self doesnt store it! These will auto-post on your profile because when you add them YOU GAVE THEM PERMISSION to post things on your profile when ever they want. Many apps will post links that will take your friends to another web page that look exactly like Facebook and ask them to login and STEAL their email and password in order to login in an unauthorized manor!

Now I found a great article about this although I dislike they use the word Hacked in a deragator manor instead of the proper word cracked.


If you would like to know more about this feel free to post a comment. If someone has gained access to your account either a person or an app. Remove all the apps you added and change your password! If you completely loose access to your account contact the Facebook admins.

More information on the subject: