HackBlog

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is the most widely used technology for providing a secure communication between the web client and the web server. Most of us are familiar with many sites such as Gmail, Yahoo etc. using https protocol in their login pages. When we see this, we may wonder what’s the difference between http and https. In simple words HTTP protocol is used for standard communication between the Web server and the client. HTTPS is used for a SECURE communication.

What exactly is Secure Communication ?

Suppose there exists two communication parties A (client) and B (server).

Working of HTTP

When A sends a message to B, the message is sent as a plain text in an unencrypted manner. This is acceptable in normal situations where the messages exchanged are not confidential. But imagine a situation where A sends a PASSWORD to B. In this case, the password is also sent as a plain text. This has a serious security problem because, if an intruder (hacker) can gain unauthorised access to the ongoing communication between Aand B , he can see the PASSWORDS since they remain unencrypted. This scenario is illustrated using the following figure

Now lets see the working of HTTPS

When A sends a PASSWORD (say “mypass“) to B, the message is sent in an encrypted format. The encrypted message is decrypted on B‘s side. So even if the Hacker gains an unauthorised access to the ongoing communication between A and B he gets only the encrypted password (“xz54p6kd“) and not the original password. This is shown below

How is HTTPS implemented ?

HTTPS is implemented using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). A website can implement HTTPS by purchasing an SSL Certificate. Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) technology protects a Web site and makes it easy for the Web site visitors to trust it. It has the following uses

1. An SSL Certificate enables encryption of sensitive information during online transactions.
2. Each SSL Certificate contains unique, authenticated information about the certificate owner.
3. A Certificate Authority verifies the identity of the certificate owner when it is issued.

How Encryption Works ?

Each SSL Certificate consists of a Public key and a Private key. The public key is used to encrypt the information and the private key is used to decrypt it. When your browser connects to a secure domain, the server sends a Public key to the browser to perform the encryption. The public key is made available to every one but the private key(used for decryption) is kept secret. So during a secure communication, the browser encrypts the message using the public key and sends it to the server. The message is decrypted on the server side using the Private key(Secret key).

How to identify a Secure Connection ?
In Internet Explorer, you will see a lock icon in the Security Status bar. The Security Status bar is located on the right side of the Address bar. You can click the lock to view the identity of the website.

In high-security browsers, the authenticated organization name is prominently displayed and the address bar turns GREEN when an Extended Validation SSL Certificate is detected. If the information does not match or the certificate has expired, the browser displays an error message or warning and the status bar may turn RED.

So the bottom line is, whenever you perform an online transaction such as Credit card payment, Bank login or Email login always ensure that you have a secure communication. A secure communication is a must in these situations. Otherwise there are chances of Phishing using a Fake login Page.

I Hope this helps. Please pass your comments.

In this post I will explain you about one of my favorite and interesting cryptographic algorithm called MD5 (Message-Digest algorithm 5). This algorithm is mainly used to perform file integrity checks under most circumstances. Here I will not jump into the technical aspects of this algorithm, rather will tell you about how to make use of this algorithm in your daily life. Before I tell you about how to use MD5, I would like to share one of my recent experience which made me start using MD5 algorithm.

Recently I made some significant changes and updates to my website and as obvious I generated a complete backup of the site on my server. I downloaded this backup onto my PC and deleted the original one on the server. But after a few days something went wrong and I wanted to restore the backup that I downloaded. When I tried to restore the backup I was shocked! The backup file that I used to restore was corrupted. That means, the backup file that I downloaded onto my PC wasn’t exactly the one that was on my server. The reason is that there occured some data loss during the download process. Yes, this data loss can happen often when a file is downloaded from the Internet. The file can be corrupted due to any of the following reasons.

• Data loss during the download process, due to instability in the Internet connection/server
• The file can be tampered due to virus infections or
• Due to Hacker attacks

So whenever you download any valuable data from the Internet it is completely necessary that you check the integrity of the downloaded file. That is you need to ensure that the downloaded file is exactly the same as that of the original one. In this scenario the MD5 hash can become handy. All you have to do is generate MD5 hash (or MD5 check-sum) for the intended file on your server. After you download the file onto your PC, again generate MD5 hash for the downloaded file. Compare these two hashes and if it matches then it means that the file is downloaded perfectly without any data loss.

A MD5 hash is nothing but a 32 digit hexadicimal number which can be something as follows

This hash is unique for every file irrespective of it’s size and type. That means two .exe files with the same size will not have the same MD5 hash even though they are of same type and size. So MD5 hash can be used to uniquely identify a file.

How to use MD5 Hash to check the Integrity of Files?

Suppose you have a file called backup.tar on your server. Before you download, you need to generate MD5 hash for this file on your server. To do so use the following command.

For UNIX:

When you hit ENTER you’ll see something as follows

This is the MD5 hash for the file backup.tar. After you download this file onto your PC, you can cross check it’s integrity by again re-generating MD5 hash for the downloaded file. If both the hash matches then it means that the file is perfect. Otherwise it means that the file is corrupt. To generate the MD5 hash for the downloaded file on your Windows PC use the following freeware tool

MD5 Summer (Click on the link to download)

I hope you like this post. For further doubts and clarifications please pass your comments. Cheers!

Do you suspect that your email account is under attack? Do you want to maintain total security of your email account and make it 100% hack proof? Well, Some times our email account might have got hacked and we may not be aware of that. We may believe that our email account is safe, but in reality our private and confidential information may be falling into the hands of a third person.

Here are some signs of unauthorized activity on an email account.

1. Your new emails are marked as Read even if you’ve not read them.

2. Your emails are moved to Trash or even permanently deleted without your notice.

3. Your emails are being forwarded to a third party email address (check your settings->forwarding).

4. Your secondary email address is changed.

If you come across any of the above activities on your email account, then it is a clear indication that your email account is hacked.

Additional Security Features in Gmail to ensure the Safety of your Account

Gmail provides an additional security feature to protect your email account through the means of IP address logging. That is, Gmail records your IP address every time you login to your Gmail account. So, if a third party gets access to your account then even his/her IP is also recorded. To see a list of recorded IP address, scroll down to the bottom of your Gmail account and you’ll see something like this.

You can see from the above figure that Gmail shows the IP address of last login (last account activity). You can click on Details to see the IP address of your last 5 activities. If you find that the IP listed in the logs doesn’t belong to you, then you can suspect unauthorized activity.

Steps to be carried out to stop unauthorized activity on your email account

If you feel/suspect that your account is hacked then you must immediately take the actions mentioned below

1. Change your Password

2. Change your security question.

2. Remove any third party email address (if any) to which your account is set to forward emails.

3. Make sure that you can access the email account of your secondary email address.

4. Also change you secondary email password and security question.

This ensures that your account is safe from future attacks. But I strongly recommend that you read the following post to protect your email account from being hacked.

How to Protect Your Email Account from being Hacked

Please pass your comments and express your opinions.

Many websites ask for your email address when you shop online, download a free software etc. But do you know that this has a chance of affecting your email privacy through Spam emails?

Though most websites don’t use spamming as an email marketing strategy, there are a few that use junk emails that don’t care about anti-Spam laws. Here are some tips to maintain your email privacy from such threats.

Before submitting your email address you need to check the reputation of the company. Reputed websites would normally follow the right email practices to ensure your email privacy. Such companies will never want to loose their hard earned reputation by getting blammed for spamming.

See whether the websites provides email privacy statements. You need to go through these statement in detail, and know about the kind of emails that will be sent to you, how often etc. Based on this you can decide on whether you need such emails. You don’t want to give your email address to some fraud company that is thinking about handing over your email address to hundreds of other websites.

Finally, check whether the website really respects your privacy. Often you will find some text like “I agree to receive email” that comes with a check box. You can agree to receive emails by checking the check box. If the check box is already checked, it is just a good indication that the website doesn’t respect your privacy. So watch out!

Today in this post I’ll teach you how to protect your email account from being hacked. Nowadays I get a lot of emails where most of the people say “My Email account is hacked please help…”. Now one question which arises in our mind is: “Is it so easy to hack an email account? OR Is it so difficult to protect an email account from being hacked?”. The single answer to these two questions is “Absolutely NOT!”. It is neither easy to hack an email nor difficult to protect an email account from bieng hacked.

If this is the case, then what is the reason for many people to lose their accounts?

The answer is very simple. They don’t know how to protect themselves from being hacked! In fact most of the people who lose their email accounts are not the victims of hacking but the victims of Trapping. They lose their passwords not because they are hacked by some expert hackers but they are fooled to such an extent that they themselves give away their password.

Are you confused? If so continue reading and you’ll come to know…

Now I’ll mention some of the most commonly used online scams which fool people and make them lose their passwords. I’ll also mention how to protect your email account from these scams.

1. WEBSITE SPOOFING

Website spoofing is the act of creating a website, with the intention of misleading the readers. The website will be created by a different person or organisation (Other than the original) especially for the purposes of cheating. Normally, the website will adopt the design of the target website and sometimes has a similar URL.

For example a Spoofed Website of Yahoo.com appears exactly same as Yahoo Website. So most of the people believe that it is the original site and lose their passwords. The main intention of spoofed websites is to fool users and take away their passwords. For this,the spoofed sites offer fake login pages. These fake login pages resemble the original login pages of sites like Yahoo,Gmail,Orkut etc. Since it resemble’s the original login page people beleive that it is true and give away their username and passwordsby trying to login to their accounts.

Solution:

• Never try to login/access your email account from the sites other than the original site.
• Always type the URL of the site in the address bar to get into the site. Never click on the hyperlink to enter the site.

2. BY USING KEYLOGGERS

The other commonly used method to steal password is by using a Keylogger. A Keylogger is nothing but a spyware. The detailed description of keylogger and it’s usage is discussed in the post Hacking an email account. If you read this post you’ll come to know that it is too easy to steal the password using a keylogger program. If you just access your email account from a computer installed with keylogger, you definitely lose your password. This is because the keylogger records each and every keystroke that you type.

Solution:

Protecting yourselves from a keylogger scam is very easy.Just install a good anti-spyware program and update it regularly. This keeps your PC secure from a keylogger. Also there is a program called Anti-keylogger which is specially designed to detect and remove keyloggers. You can use this program to detect some stealth keyloggers which remain undetected by many anti-spyware programs.

3. ACCESSING YOUR EMAIL ACCOUNT FROM CYBER CAFES

Do you access your email from cyber cafes? Then definitely you are under the risk of loosing your password.In fact many people lose their email account in cyber cafes. For the owner of the cyber cafe it’s just a cakewalk to steal your password. For this he just need’s to install a keylogger on his computers. So when you login to your email account from this PC, you give away your password to the cafe owner. Also there are many Remote Administration Tools (RATs) which can be used to monitor your browsing activities in real time.

This doesn’t mean that you should never use cyber cafes for browsing the internet. I know, not all the cyber cafe owners will be so wicked but it is recommended not to use cafes for accessing confidential information. If it comes to the matter of security never trust anyone, not even your friend. I always use my own PC to login to my accounts to ensure safety.

So with this I conclude my post and assume that I have helped my readers to protect their email accounts from being hacked. Please pass your comments…

Tools that can help people potentially defraud innocent surfers are available for free download on the internet, it has been claimed.

The do-it-yourself kits provide all the essential tools for launching phishing attacks – those that use spoofed emails and fraudulent websites to trick people into giving out personal financial data.

Phishing scams are on the up. Security company MessageLabs has intercepted an average of 250,000 phishing emails a month so far in 2004, compared to just 14 phishing-related emails back in August 2003.

According to anti-virus company Sophos, the DIY kits contain all the graphics, web code and text required to construct fake websites that look like legitimate online banking or shopping sites. They also include spamming software which would let you send out millions of phishing emails as bait for potential victims.

“Until now, phishing attacks have been largely the work of organised criminal gangs, however, the emergence of these ‘build your own phish’ kits mean that any old Tom, Dick or Harry can now mimic bona fide banking websites and convince customers to disclose sensitive information such as passwords, PIN numbers and account details,” said a spokesman for Sophos.

“There is plenty of profit to be made from phishing. By putting the necessary tools in the hands of amateurs, it’s likely that the number of attacks will continue to rise.”

Surfers that receive a suspicious email that claims to come from an online bank or e-commerce site should delete them and not click on any included links.

How to Recover Hacked Email Accounts?

It can be a real nightmare if someone hacks and takes control of your email account as it may contain confidential information like bank logins, credit card details and other sensitive data. If you are one such Internet user whose email account has been compromised, then this post will surely help you out. In this post you will find the possible ways and procedures to get back your hacked email account.

For Gmail:

It can be a big disaster if your Gmail account has been compromised as it may be associated with several services like Blogger, Analytics, Adwords, Adsense, Orkut etc. Losing access to your Gmail account means losing access to all the services associated it with too. Here is a list of possible recovery actions that you can try.

Step -1: Try resetting your password since it is the easiest way to get your account back in action. In this process Google may ask you to answer the secret question or may send the password reset details to the secondary email address associated with your compromised account. You can reset you password from the following link

If you cannot find success from the Step-1 then proceed to Step-2.

Step-2: Many times the hacker will change the secret question and secondary email address right after the account is compromised. This is the reason for the Password Reset process to fail. If this is the case then you need to contact the Gmail support team by filling out the account recovery form. This form will ask you to fill out several questions like

1. Email addresses of up to five frequently emailed contacts
2. Names of any 4 Labels that you may have created in your account
3. List of other services associated with your compromised account
4. Your last successful login date
5. Account created date
6. Last password that you remember and many more…

You need to fill out this form as much accurately as possible. It is obvious to forget the dates of last login, account creation and similar terms. However you need to figure out the closest possible date/answers and fill out this form. This is your last chance! The more accurate the information filled out in the recovery form, the more the chances of getting your account back. You may reach the account recovery page form the following link

For Yahoo and Hotmail:

Unfortunately for Yahoo/Hotmail there is no second option like filling out the form or contacting the support team. All you need to do is either answer the secret questions that you have setup or reset the password using the secondary email option.

To initiate the password reset process just click on the Forgot password link in your login page and proceed as per the screen instructions.

I hope this post will help you recover the lost account. I highly recommend that you also read my post on How to protect your email account from being hacked and Tips to find unauthorized activity on your Gmail account so that you always stay protected!

Almost every user on the Internet sends/receives hundreds of emails per day. However only a handful of them know what is BCC and what are the advantages of using BCC while sending an email. If you are one such Internet user who is unaware of BCC then this is the post that you should definitely read!

What is BCC?

BCC stands Blind Carbon Copy. It refers to the practice of sending an email to multiple recipients without disclosing the individual emails addresses. While sending the same email/message to multiple recipients, it is a common practice for most users to separate the email addresses by using comma or semi-colon and insert all those addresses in theTo: filed. When emails are sent in this way, each receiver is able to see the complete list of recipient email addresses to which the same message if being sent to. Unlike To:, theBCC: option allows you to hide the recipients in email messages. In other words, when emails are sent using BCC:, the receiver will not be able to see the list of recipient email addresses. Thus using BCC is a smart way to protect the privacy of the recipients.

Why should you use BCC?

Here are the reasons for using BCC:

Privacy – BCC provides an easy and simple option for protecting the privacy of your recipients. Under many circumstances it is necessary for us send an email without letting the recipients know who else is receiving the same message. Also it is highly recommended that you use the BCC: while forwarding a joke or a funny email to a list of your friends. If you are sending email on behalf of a business or organization, it may be especially important to keep lists of clients, members, or associates confidential. So don’t forget to use BCC: in instances wherever privacy matters.

Respect for you recipients- While forwarding email messages, people often do not bother to remove the list of previous recipients. As a result, messages that are repeatedly sent to many recipients may contain long lists of email addresses. This makes it easy for the spammers to collect and target those emails for spamming.

In order to avoid the risk of spammers, it is necessary that you encourage people/friends to use BCC: while forwarding any message to you. This prevents your email address from appearing in other people’s inboxes thereby keeping yourself less exposed to spammers. You may also refer How to Protect an Email Account from SPAM for more information on spamming.

How to BCC an email message?

Most email clients provide the BCC: option under a few lines below the To: field. All you have to do is just enter the list of recipients in the BCC: field instead of entering in the To:field. You may enter only your own email address in the To: field. Once you do this just hit the Send button.

The moral is that you should use BCC: while sending bulk messages so as to protect the privacy of your recipients.

Do you want to block emails from your ex wife/husband? Do you want to block those annoying offers and newsletters that reach your inbox? Well here is a way to block all those unwanted and annoying emails that you do not want to see or read! With this trick you can block individual email address or the whole domain from which you do not want the emails to come from. Here are the step-by-step instructions to do this.

For Gmail

1. Login to your account

2. At the top-right corner, click on Settings

3. Under Settings, click on Filters

4. You’ll now see an option “Create a new filter“, click on it

5. Now in the From field enter the email address from which you do not want to receive the emails

For ex. you may enter john@gmail .com in the From field to block all incoming emails from this address. However if you want to block the whole domain then use the following syntax:*@xyz.com. Now all the incoming emails from the domain xyz.com will be blocked.

6. Click on Next Step, select the action you’d like to take on the blocked emails. You may select the option Delete it so that the blocked email is moved to trash. To unblock the email, all you need to do is just delete the filter that you’ve created.

For Yahoo

1. Login to your account

2. At the top-right corner, click on Options

3. A drop down menu appears, now click on More options

4. In the left panel select the option Filters and click on create or edit filters

5. Now click on Add

6. In the next screen, give a name to your filter and in the From header field enter the email address that you want to block.

Fox ex. john@gmail.com or if you want to block an entire domain then just enter @xyz.com. Dont enter *@xyz.com. Select the option Move the message to: Trash and click on Save Changes.

For Hotmail

1. Login to your account

2. At the top-right corner, click on Options

3. A drop down menu appears, now click on More options

4. Click on Safe and blocked senders link under Junk e-mail

5. Now click on Blocked senders

6. Type in the email address that you want to block under blocked e-mail address or domain field.

For ex. Enter john@yahoo.com to block the individual email address or just enter xyz.com to block the entire domain.

That’s it. You no longer receive those annoying emails in your inbox. Keep your inbox clean and tidy. I hope this post helps. pass your comments!