Hacking??

LegacyUser · 06-01-2009 12:54am #1

My bf who is very IT techy mentioned that he'd bought a program to break passwords on PC's. He also said that he'd managed to log into his cousin's facebook page to see if there was any activity as his cousin went AWOL while travelling in India, I don't know if this was with this program or just guessing potential passwords. I'm now thinking, what's to stop him hacking into my e-mail and reading my private mail. Also we share a laptop at home, which he bought & set up, is it possible that he's tracked my user accounts passwords to pry later and how would I know.....

minidazzler · 06-01-2009 1:13am

Your Email password is your most important password because it is here that passwords are sent if you lose one. This is the one to keep safe.

When choosing a password, choose something that only you would guess.

For the security questions, just have bogus answers because this is how alot of people "Hack" email accounts!!!!!

Rb · 06-01-2009 1:13am

Lol, if he bought it then he's not as "IT Techy" as you'd like to think.

Don't worry about it.

oeb · 06-01-2009 1:16am

His idea of 'hacking' is running a brute force program. What this does is keeps trying passwords from a wordlist until it gets the right one. The easy way around them is to get an unusual password.

Get something long, if you want something easy to remember, pick two words, lets say blue car. Your password is now
#BluE!@cAr.08-

That wont be on any wordlist, the longer it is the better, mix case, throw in punctuation and a couple of numbers if you can.

Cuddlesworth · 06-01-2009 1:18am

The longer and more complex the password the harder it becomes to break.

For example, "password" would be easy to break

But something like "TrY2Br3aKTh1sP@ssW0rdA11UvANT" would take a long long time. You would be surprised at how easy it becomes to memorize a password as complex as that through use alone.

You might want to have a look at the trust issue you have with him though.

JonathanAnon · 06-01-2009 1:20am

I work in IT.
It depends on how he "hacked" into the account. Was it maybe just a case that he guessed the password, or your cousin left it logged in? Online passwords are difficult to break as there is encryption between the computer and the server.

Regarding email, if you are using outlook or some POP client, the passwords are easy to break. Windows passwords are also easy enough to break. What email client do you use?

If you are worried about it just make sure that any of your online accounts, just make sure that you do not leave any of them logged in, or dont ever click that "remember me" checkbox icon..

youcrazyjesus! · 06-01-2009 1:22am

He could easily install a keylogger. If you're using Gmail it will tell you down at the bottom when the last activity took place. You'll know if he looked or not. If you've something to hide then don't use the laptop.

dudara · 06-01-2009 1:22am

Unless he has a keystroke logger, otherwise brute force programs will take a while.

Technical issues aside, if he gets a kick from "hacking" peoples' accounts, then it is possible that he has done it to you too. It's time for a chat with him. Make sure to emphasise how important this issue of privacy and trust is with you.

Additionally, you might want to remind him that this behaviour is very morally dubious.

Creamy Goodness · 06-01-2009 1:22am

also who's to say he didn't install a keylogger - does what it says on the tin, records all keys pressed - and sniffed through the results.

these things can run very discreetly.

Omnipresence · 06-01-2009 1:23am

Hmm... I'm an 'IT person'

and ultra strong passwords don't matter if someone actually has access to your PC/laptop via another account (typically an admin account)

If he's even a little bit techy he could run whats called a keylogger on your shared laptop that is a program that can run in the background and simply scrape all your keystrokes into a text file....

That way he could get any password or literally anything you have typed on the computer...

People should be aware of stuff like this..

i wouldn't call this hacking ... just basic computer skills to the right person... it is however highly immoral and wrong. Not sure where legality comes into it if the pc is actually shared ... anyone ?

-A

fergalr · 06-01-2009 1:25am

Also we share a laptop at home, which he bought & set up, is it possible that he's tracked my user accounts passwords to pry later and how would I know.....

Answering from a purely technical point of view, and neglecting any other aspects, which definitely merit discussion, such as trust in a relationship:

If you share a laptop with someone, who has even a moderate amount of technical knowledge, and this other person set up the laptop, and runs the computer etc, then it is very much possible, and not at all hard, for them to have captured every password you have entered into the laptop.

There is really no way at all of entering your password into their laptop without there being a possibility of it being stolen by them.

And to the second part of your question, there's no easy way of knowing if this has happened (you could look at login times if your e-mail provider gives you these etc, but that's hit and miss).

But the technical fact that it's possible to do these things doesn't mean anyone is stealing your passwords etc.

dudara · 06-01-2009 1:25am

OK - now that we've aired a lot of the technical issues here, can we focus on the personal issue at hand here.

i.e. no more techy talk.

dudara

Antilles · 06-01-2009 1:28am

Hacked off wrote: »

I'm now thinking, what's to stop him hacking into my e-mail and reading my private mail.

Um, his love and respect for you?

If you honestly think he would hack your email why on earth is he still your boyfriend??

girlbiker · 06-01-2009 1:39am

Maybe he's already in your email account and is testing you to see if you run off and email your long distance lover Carlos to type loudly He's on to us!! He's on to us!!

No?

Change your password to something strange and unlike you and what do the innocent have to worry about?;)

Liam Byrne · 06-01-2009 1:42am

Report him to his broadband provider and get him cut off.

Possibly dump him - do you want to be with someone who does unethical and potentially illegal things ?

I have zero tolerance for this type of crap.

And if anyone thinks that I'm being extreme, the fact that the OP asked the question means she doesn't trust her boyfriend. And from the description above, I wouldn't either.

Nothingcompares · 06-01-2009 1:43am

you shouldn't be worried that your boyfriend will "hack" your email account. do you have something to hide? Not to imply you don't have a right to privacy.

Liam Byrne · 06-01-2009 1:47am

Nothingcompares wrote: »

you shouldn't be worried that your boyfriend will "hack" your email account. do you have something to hide? Not to imply you don't have a right to privacy.

Irrelevant. Her account is HER account. You asking if she has something to hide is completely unfair.

Whether she does [have something to hide] or not is HER business, and there's absolutely no reason to ask or assume that she does.

It's HIM that's been proven to be unethical and untrustworthy.

minidazzler · 06-01-2009 1:48am

Nothingcompares wrote: »

you shouldn't be worried that your boyfriend will "hack" your email account. do you have something to hide? Not to imply you don't have a right to privacy.

Of course she should be worried, he is untrustworthy if he cracks into her email account.

Also, OP, Definitely change your Secret question to something thats totally random,

I was messing about after I saw this post and I now know I could change the password on 90% of my friends email accounts given the information I know about them.

Liam Byrne · 06-01-2009 1:51am

Nothingcompares, what you posted above is the equivalent of someone posting and you answering as follows:

Post : "There's a guy who's already broken into 2 houses and is boasting about it and I'm worried he's going to break into mine. What should I do ?"

Reply : "Why, what valuables or dodgy things do you have in there ?"

Rb · 06-01-2009 2:05am

Liam Byrne wrote: »

Nothingcompares, what you posted above is the equivalent of someone posting and you answering as follows:

Post : "There's a guy who's already broken into 2 houses and is boasting about it and I'm worried he's going to break into mine. What should I do ?"

Reply : "Why, what valuables or dodgy things do you have in there ?"

No, it's not.

LegacyUser · 06-01-2009 2:06am

I once hacked into an ex GF's email account (when I say hacked I mean guessed her password), I was 99% sure she was cheating and I wanted to confirm it.

Turned out I was right but tbh I felt absolutely horrible about it. To this day I regret it, I mean it achieved what I wanted it to but I felt I lowered myself by doing it (plus Im not sure how illegal it actually is either- something that only dawned on me afterwards).

If he is hacking your account - or you are terrified that he will- then you obviously have some serious problems in your relationship

Antilles · 06-01-2009 2:13am

Hacked off wrote: »

My bf who is very IT techy mentioned that he'd bought a program to break passwords on PC's. He also said that he'd managed to log into his cousin's facebook page to see if there was any activity as his cousin went AWOL while travelling in India, I don't know if this was with this program or just guessing potential passwords. I'm now thinking, what's to stop him hacking into my e-mail and reading my private mail. Also we share a laptop at home, which he bought & set up, is it possible that he's tracked my user accounts passwords to pry later and how would I know.....

Ok, why is everybody jumping on the bandwagon that OP's boyfriend is hacking/trying to hack her accounts? I see nothing to indicate that he is in the above quote.

He's "IT techy", and has a program to break passwords on PCs. So what? I've forgotten passwords/had to help friends access their data when they forget passwords before. I've not had to get a hacking tool for it, but my Google searches for what to do threw up loads of such tools. Why do you assume OP's boyfriend has an ulterior motive for this?

He "hacked" a cousin's facebook account when he went missing. This is hardly nefarious activity. I would assume some other attempts were made to contact said cousin. If there was genuine concern for the cousin's safety, that plus the BF being savvy enough to guess a password are all you're looking at.

And that's it. Two vaguely related incidents that can easily be explained in perfectly innocent ways. All I see here is OP overreacting to her BF being surprisingly (to her) technically literate. If OP distrusts her BF enough to ask this question here, they she has issues in her relationship she needs to work out one way or another. I see no reason to indict the BF based on this at all.

Dr_Phil · 06-01-2009 2:31am

Hi OP,

If you have 2 PC's at home talking to each other via router he could also install a sniffer. It easily acquires packets going in and out of all the computers locally, I've done that myself a few years ago (just for training purposes

) and got a few passwords from e-mail clients as well as a credit card numbers and history of chats from instant messengers.

Brute force for local account passwords, that are longer than 8 characters and containing just some Caps and numbers may take about a month to crack, using an average dual-core Intel processor. He would need to boot the operating system from the USB key, copy the *SAM file over, move it to another computer, load to the program that will decode the actual file and let it go...

As few other people mentioned before, he could also use a keylogger - as simple as 1, 2, 3...

Anyway if he likes the stuff, send him to Google, there's really loads of stuff for the beginners. Who knows, if y ou work with him and develop his passions maybe in a while he'll become a real star on the dark sky of the Internet

Here's a small, entertaining bit for your man: http://www.hackthissite.org/ I wonder how far would he go?

God bless...

Liam Byrne · 06-01-2009 2:41am

Rb wrote: »

No, it's not.

How do you figure that ?

The OP said they were worried that the b/f could break into her accounts, and asked if it was possible.

Nothingcompares asked "what have you got in there to hide".

That's not relevant.

Whatever about the possible innocent motives with the OP and the b/f (given that the cousin went AWOL and that could be related) my read on Nothingcompare's question was spot-on.

And the fact that the OP doesn't trust her b/f also stands. If it was obvious to her that the program was bought SOLELY to track the missing cousin, there would have been no reason for her to assume the b/f would try the same thing on her accounts.

A friend of mine locked her keys in her car one day, and I managed to open it for her. Did my then g/f or any of my friends start to wonder "I hope Liam doesn't break into my car" ? No, they didn't, because they trust me and they know that I did a one-off, specific task for a specific reason. I would NOT do it again (unless, of course, a similar situation arose again and I was asked to by the owner of the car, which would be like the OP asking "If I forget my password, will my b/f be able to help me using this program", which is NOT what she asked).

sceptre · 06-01-2009 2:46am

I definitely agree with Antilles' first three paragraphs. Just because someone may be able to do something doesn't mean he/she will. I've had numerous people log into their email accounts from my machine and they trust that I'm not childish enough to install a keylogger on the thing. GF has had me log into her email for her when she's away and expecting something important, I assume that she trusts me not to log into the account just to poke around. (also, I deliberately forgot the password after putting it in but that's by the by).

I strongly suspect that he managed to get into his cousin's facebook account by making some reasonable guesses and realistically it looks like one of those unusual times when you might just to se if they were safe (though really, the more normal thing might be to send an "are you alive?" message first, although some of us don't answer those for a while).

Ask him about it. Better than wondering. Especially when there's dual physical access to the machine - if it's bothering you a bit, you'll not have your mind set at ease unless you ask.

For anyone who's following the "if you have nothing to hide" line of thinking, it's the same as not opening someone's letters. You could do it but you shouldn't. Not because there's anything to hide, just because you shouldn't.

Overheal · 06-01-2009 2:51am

Antilles wrote: »

Ok, why is everybody jumping on the bandwagon that OP's boyfriend is hacking/trying to hack her accounts? I see nothing to indicate that he is in the above quote.

It doesnt mean that at some future point, these kind of situations cant go sour. In this example, if she and the boyfriend have some future dispute, or he becomes jealous or paranoid, he may have something at his disposal to get into her private accounts.

Being technically savvy myself, I made a choice long ago not to have hacking/cracking passwords as part of my skillset - the concept is pretty foreign to me. I make up for it with gross amounts of software piracy

But I would ask about the password software he bought - there are legitimate reasons to be able to bypass a windows password for example. Just like I'm sure theres a perfectly legitimate reason why my brother let me know the passcode to his home security system.

All I see here is OP overreacting to her BF being surprisingly (to her) technically literate. If OP distrusts her BF enough to ask this question here, they she has issues in her relationship she needs to work out one way or another. I see no reason to indict the BF based on this at all.

I wouldnt indict him either, but neither would I feel entirely comfortable if I thought my online accounts were, or had the potential, of being comprimised.

LillyVanilli · 06-01-2009 12:23pm

You should really change your password to boyfriendsnameiscrapinbed and you will find out soon enough if he has your password if he starts acting differently.

But OP it sounds like you need to talk about your trust issues with your boyfriend

towel401 · 06-01-2009 1:22pm

JonathanAnon wrote: »

Regarding email, if you are using outlook or some POP client, the passwords are easy to break. Windows passwords are also easy enough to break. What email client do you use?

it doesn't have to be. but most people use webmail these days, the last few years have brought in an trend to do everything from within a web browser

i used to hack people's facebook / bebo accounts using a slightly modified proxy. n00b trick but it does work although some sites are starting to use encryption

Wibbs · 06-01-2009 1:34pm

OK folks Please no more about the techy side. It's been done to death and a warning has already been given. We know it can be done now so please refrain and only post if you have an opinion on the trust issue. That's what it boils down to really. Thanks.

prentice · 06-01-2009 1:42pm

I think its clear, They are the "Irish" version of Mr and Mrs Smith

and its just paranoid really.

Beruthiel · 06-01-2009 1:52pm

prentice wrote: »

I think its clear, They are the "Irish" version of Mr and Mrs Smith

and its just paranoid really.

Read this forums Charter.
One more comment like that and I'll ban you from here.
B

miss_shadow · 06-01-2009 2:01pm

that's just awful what he is doing.
its obvious he has no respect to the lowest point with other people's privacy, the violation. and he probably would not have a second thought if he wanted to look in your emails.

I once had a bf (EX) who insisted on telling people he knew how to hack, when in reality all he knew was how to get was one persons password simply cos she didn't think that much..
it was a way of control and making people feel intimidated.

your bf I think, does not value people at all. I have gone to my sisters computer and she has been logged into facebook or bebo and her email, but I simply log her out because I would never, ever, never, ever would violate her personal space.

gees, sit him down, have a good rant at him for how wrong it is and how you feel.

buy yourself a computer....

prentice · 06-01-2009 2:17pm

Beruthiel wrote: »

Read this forums Charter.
One more comment like that and I'll ban you from here.
B

Not entirely sure which bit i contravened!

but fair enough ,Ill keep me gob shut.

syklops · 06-01-2009 2:20pm

OP, feel free to PM me if you would like some advice on protecting your privacy.

I work in Penetration Testing which in lays mans terms means I 'hack' into corporate computers and networks, at the behest of their owners I should add, and when I tell people what I do, the reactions I get vary from curiosity to out right shock and dismay. Many don't feel comfortable with someone having the skills to break into their computers, and reading their data. It is perfectly acceptable to be concerned who can read your data. In work I employ two things to assuage my employers concerns. These are ethics and a Non-disclosure agreement. In my private life however, I just employ ethics. Could I hack my fiancee's email account? Probably. Have I ever/Would I ever? No. In the same way I would never open her post.

OP, you are concerned because your boyfriend now possesses the tools to impinge on your privacy on the computer. At first it sounds like quite a shocking situation, but when you think about it, he has had access to your information for some time. He needs no special software to go through the messages in your phone. He needs no special skills to open your post. He doesn't need any advanced listening devices to listen to your phone calls.

Do you have any reason to believe he has done any of these low tech 'hack attacks' on you in the past? If not, then why does the issue of trust change for you when it is employed on the computer?

If you do think he has violated your privacy in other ways, then that is the issue at hand. Have you got problems in your relationship? Is he a jealous individual? You have not mentioned other trust issues in your post, just the fact that he has a program for cracking passwords.

To use a phrase from law enforcement, he has the means to commit an act of privacy invasion, the question you need to ask yourself, and we can not answer it for you, is, does he have a motive?

m83 · 06-01-2009 3:07pm

This has absolutely nothing to do with computers or hacking. It is a plain and simple trust issue.

delly · 06-01-2009 3:20pm

To the OP, I don't think it really matters what your boyfriend could potentially do, but what you actually know he has done and in this case it seems like nothing. Unless you know he has read your emails etc., then you are making presumptions. Its the same as if you left your phone at home all day, would you presume that he read your text messages just because he could?

If you have trust issues with your boyfriend then you need to sort them, rather than getting freaked out by his IT knowledge and what he may have done.

Hacking??

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