What are the Top Ten Ways Hackers Get Your Passwords

There are dozens of common ways for hackers to uncover your passwords.  Below are the top ten ways this occurs in 2016:

1. phishing –  spam messages (emails, texts…) asking you and millions of others for passwords usually by asking you to reset or verify your credentials
2. spear phishing – sending YOU targeted messaging that relates to something the hackers knows about you, asking you to reset or verify your credentials
3. keylogging – malware that records and transmits all of your keystrokes to a hacker
4. theft – sometimes account information is stolen from websites and corporate systems that you sign into
5. brute force hacks – hackers just guess try common combinations like aaaa, aaab, aaac, 1234, 12345, password, Passw0rd
6. dictionary attacks – hackers run through common words in the dictionary like, password, father, cheese, monkey
7. doxing – hackers learn as much about you as they can from social media and friends then guess that your personal information contains your passwords, like Timmy, 4035551212, ilovelaura
8. impersonation reset – sometimes companies can be convinced to reset your passwords like if a hacker phoned your company crying saying they were you and needed the password reset
9. honey pot – usually a website run by hackers that relate to something you like but require you to sign in.  Most people user a small number of related passwords so if you sign into one site with a password run by hackers, they can often guess at the derivatives you have for other systems
10. purchase – hackers can easily buy usernames and passwords from others that were collected using any of the processes above

This list is courtesy of our friends at www.TheTopTen.ca