How to stay safe online

How to stay safe online

In the previous blog we were talking about ethical and non ethical processes of hacking and I gave the definition of ethical hacking, ethical hacking is mainly for good purposes but if we omit the word "Ethical" then it is gonna create a confusion among us.
In simple terms hacking is nothing but breaking into someone else's computer or system by
circumventing the safety measures and stealing the information contained within, or worse, sabotaging the entire system. And that is clearly a criminal offence but people like us use it for some good purposes, like betting with your friend that you can hack your friend's wifi, helping government to detect a criminal and so on....
Hacking into someone's else'e wifi connection is illigal if he/she is not even aware that you are doing so, and in future I will describe some tools that are really powerful to hack into someone's wifi and steal his/her personal information, but this blog is for educational purposes only, if you get arrested or caught in the act somehow, you don't know me and you have never read my blog.
In its most elemental form, hacking can be defined as the process of ascertaining and the subsequent
exploitation of the various shortfalls and weaknesses in a computer system or a network of such
computer systems. This exploitation may take the form of accessing and stealing of information,
altering the configuration, changing the structural picture of the computer system and so on.

Now we will get some basic knowledge about penetration testing:

Penetration testing is the process whereby a deliberate attack is mounted on a computer system, in
which its weak spots are noted, and the data stored in it is accessed. The intention is to demonstrate
and thereby ascertain the efficiency of the security safeguards installed in the system.

The primary objective of penetration testing is to find out the vulnerable areas in a system and fix
them before any external threat compromises them. The key areas to be tested in any penetration
testing are the software, hardware, computer network and the process.

The testing can be done both in an automated way as well as manually. The automated method makes
use of software and programs that the penetration tester has composed, which are then run through the system and network. All vulnerabilities cannot be detected by performing a penetration testing.

Penetration testing mainly detects some loopholes or something that makes a server or a Personal computer network vulnerable or even makes your firewall weak and we can get access to your computer and yes dude we can control your life, everything you do online and even we can play GTA with your life, so I suggest you to maintain some basic security aspects.

How to partially secure yourself ?

Yes you can secure yourself, but "partially", I am using the term partially because there is no such security that we cannot bypass but the more you take precaution, the harder it gets for us to break into your system.

So now we are gonna talk about how one can secure himself,

Here we go:

Step 1: Always make sure that your password is minimum 13 characters long and contains atleast one UPPER CASE, one lower case, one $pecial character and it should not contain any common word that is available in dictionary.

Step 2: Never share your password with anyone, yes I mean "ANYONE"

Step 3:If you even share your password with someone whom you believe more than any one then do not share that in facebook, whatsapp or any kind of social networking site, Just write down your password with pen and paper and give it to him/her.

Step 4: Keep your PC softwares and operating system upto date and never bother to use a cracked software.

Step 5: If you use a home network and a wifi router then try to use WPA or WPA2 protection but never use WPS or WEP protection because cracking a WPS enabled password is kid's play for us but WPA and WPA 2 is not as easy as it seems, it can take upto 2 hours or more for us to crack that security, later I will describe what is WPS, WPA and WPA 2.

Step 6: Never use the same password for every account, always try to use different passwords and if you cannon remember them then use a trick, Suppose your password is "I lovetowatchmovies!"
then for twitter, facebook, youtube just add one or two initial letters of that account just like
"I lovetowatchmovies!Tr" for twitter, "I lovetowatchmovies!Fb" for facebook and so on.

Step 7: Never use free public wifi, whatever happens with your life, and if you have to use one then make sure that you are not logging into any one of your account using password and never ever do online transactions from your account while using the public wifi.

Step 8: If you get some call and the guy on the other side claims that he is calling from your bank and asks for your account details, IFSC, card no, pin or CVV, then always try to avoid those things and if he disturbs you again and again first go to your bank branch for verification and then go to the nearby police station and file a complaint against the caller with his phone no.

Step 9: While using bank ATM, if you find any kind of abnormal behaviour of the ATM as example the display is not clear enough, or if you feel difficult to punch your card in the slot and if you feel that something wrong with the buttons by which you have to type the pin then don't do any kind of activity like transaction or taking a mini statement and contact your local bank branch or police station, and if someone make you do transaction forcefully by pulling out a gun at you, then no problem buddy, just type your pin in reverse as example if your pin is 1234, then simply type 4321,
In this way the ATM will do a successful transaction but the money will not come out and on the other hand it will inform the nearest police station that you are in trouble.

Step 10:  Last but not the least, you must have to install a firewall for your computer, though there is an in built firewall available for your pc provided by microsoft but I suggest you to use a free firewall named Zone Alarm security available at http://www.zonealarm.com/software/free-firewall/

And by taking these small steps you can make your life safer and easier than ever.
That's it for now, I will describe some of the tools used by professionals for penetration testing

          - AgnidhraChakraborty

                                                                                            http://agnidhrashim.wix.com/ethical-hacker

                                                                        Email: agnidhrashim@gmail.com

                                                                       Call me : 9735689898