Hacking techniques

Corned Beef Sandwich

I was watching some videos on youtube recently and I discovered that there are more than one way for a hacker to gain access to personal files on your computer. Port forwarding is one way a hacker can gain access to your computer. If he accesses your router he can access your computer by opening the ports to your computer.

There is also another trick they can use such as setting up a mobile hotspot from their own computers in a public area. By doing this unsuspected people will login onto these hotspots and the hacker can access their personal computer unbeknownst to them.

Is this true?

FanadMan

Corned Beef Sandwich wrote: »

I was watching some videos on youtube recently and I discovered that there are more than one way for a hacker to gain access to personal files on your computer. Port forwarding is one way a hacker can gain access to your computer. If he accesses your router he can access your computer by opening the ports to your computer.

There is also another trick they can use such as setting up a mobile hotspot from their own computers in a public area. By doing this unsuspected people will login onto these hotspots and the hacker can access their personal computer unbeknownst to them.

Is this true?

If you saw it on the internet then it HAS to be true!!

Xterminator

1st point - not as simple as it sounds, however if he has access inside your router hacker can take advantage of known weaknesses.

So change the default password of your router, and consider whitelisting mac addresses. not fool proof, but means its harder to get inside.

2nd point - well that's not hacking. if you connect to open wifi your giving your data away. Its like complaining about someone eating the food you discarded. using a vpn can help, read this.

https://buffered.com/faq/will-vpn-protect-public-wifi/

rgodard80a

If you have some malware running on your machine to start with then you're already in trouble.

Firewalls generally stop network traffic coming in, but not going out.
So malicious software on your machine could connect to any server on the internet and receive commands, send data (files, webcam video), download more malware to install on your computer from a "command and control site", etc..

Ports can be automatically opened up by malicious (or benign) software on your machine if your router has "UPnP" enabled.
While this can be handy for non-techies, eg. your playstation opening up ports etc... it also enables malware to open up ports for itself and leave your network open to further attack.

If there's a vulnerability in your router, eg. weak admin passwords, bugs in the routers API, then it could open up ports to the outside, redirect all your internet traffic to an attacker allowing them to view your traffic and inject malicious scripts in the returned web pages etc.

This sort of thing isn't theorethical, some big ISP in the US has tonnes of vulnerable routers. Vulnerable routers, webcams, IOT devices etc are being hacked into and join a "botnet" to perform denial of service attacks on web sites/services.

mach1982

OP go watch Mr Robot.