How To Protect / Secure Your Wi-Fi Network?

Hello All, I am back to blogging again after 3-4 years motivated and ready than ever before. For 5 years now, I am working online on Upwork and some other freelancing sites as security expert helping clients fixing their hacked sites/servers so could not manage much time for writing but will try to regularly update with new hacking tutorials and tricks from now onwards. I have recently changed the look/design of site as well so I hope you would like it :)

Using man-in-the-middle attack, someone can eavesdrop on your network traffic and can easily get all administrator details and have un-authorized access to your Wi-Fi network.

So today I am going to provide some basic approaches to secure your home or office Wi-Fi network from hackers.

Logging to Router and Change Default Password

You have to look at back of your router and get login details like IP Address, Username and Password. Usually details are written at back and if not you may call your ISP (Internet Service Provider) if they gave you the router otherwise find the model number and look up information on Google.

Visit IP Address in browser and enter login details when asked. This page is only accessible when you are using the router’s Wi-Fi network.

After logging in, first thing you have to do is to change default password setup by router. Settings may vary depending on which company router you using (mentioned image is for D-Link routers), some routers provide options to change default admin username as well.

Why should you change the default network password? With default password, someone can easily login to router setting (by default gateway IP which is not hard to find) and have un-authorized access to change router settings. So changing password would not allow anyone to access router settings except you.

SSID, Password and WPA2 Encryption

Pick a SSID (network name) which is not relevant to your identity or draw attention from hackers.

Use a strong password and once you do that please make sure to update passwords on all connected devices.

For encryption, make sure you choose WPA2 and not WEP/WPA. WPA2, short for Wi-Fi Protected Access 2, the follow on security method to WPA for wireless networks that provides stronger data protection and network access control. It provides enterprise and consumer Wi-Fi users with a high level of assurance that only authorized users can access their wireless networks

Firmware Update

Please consider updating firmware of your router which you can find under admin settings. Using the latest firmware version ensures you have all available security patches.

Disable WPS

WPS, short for Wi-Fi Protected setup is insecure so you should disable it. This is a button on your router.

Guest Networks

Some routers provide this option using which you can add guest network which creates a separate network for guests. It is a totally different network with a different password from the network. This means devices connected to the Guest network will NOT be able to share files and printers connected to the main network.

Parental Controls

With it, you can block inappropriate sites and limit the time your kids spend online.

Additional Settings

You may consider enable MAC Filtering (However they can easily spoofed and just give false sense of security) or Hide SSID.

There are wide ranges of settings under your router which you can change and set accordingly but please be cautious when doing so.

Any question? Please let me know in comment section.

Thank you.

WordPress Security: Securing Sites From Hackers / Future Attacks

As WordPress is the most popular CMS available on the web but also vulnerable to threats if we don't follow the necessary security measures.

In one of previous guest post, Sarah Rexman mentioned some tips about securing WordPress and in this post I'm gonna share my own experience. While working as freelancer on Upwork, PeoplePerHour and Freelancer; clients always have issues about securing their sites from hackers and ask about how to prevent from future attacks. So consider these points to secure your WordPress site for now and future:

• Keep your WordPress up to date. Latest stable version is 7.0.3 released on 6th August, 2026.
• Keep your all plugins, themes up to date.
• Always keep backup of your database, files and make it update after some interval.
• If site has been compromised, then you must change your salt keys from your wp-config.php file under root directory. You can generate new keys from here. It will force all users to have to log in again.
• Change your all passwords associated with site at regular interval.
• Use strong passwords for all logins. Include the mixture of atleast one uppercase letter, lowercase letter, special character, number.
• Change your WP-Admin username from admin to some other name.
• Change database prefix from wp_ to some other complicated characters to avoid zero-day SQL injection attacks.
• Remove timthumb script if your site running it as its no longer supported or maintained.
• Use plugins after testing it properly. Going through plugin review, Google search will let you know about the reputation of the plugin.
• Keep track of latest visitors through log files for tracking site users. If you find any suspicious activity at any particular time, then logs files might help you to know a bit about the attacker.
• Change permissions for .htaccess, wp-config.php, themes main files to 444.
• Proper file permissions for other files and folders. Best practice is to use 644 for files and 755 for folders.
• Keep your own system virus free.
• Always try accessing the site credentials from your own system only.
• Validate all user inputs  like URL, image uploads etc.
• Keep track of WP-Admin, FTP accounts user section for any unauthorized user.
• You can also use Wordfence plugin to monitor from malicious scripts.
• Put some security to the server on which your site is hosted, either it hosted on dedicated or a shared server.
• Keep updated with latest vulnerabilities.

Is your own site get infected with malware/virus, contact me through contact form to get rid of malware with future security implementation. In some cases, site might be hit by pharma hack, you can check it either through site content or by searching your site on Google with query "site:example.com pharma"

Having any further issue? Please comment down!

Tutorial On Shoulder Surfing Technique & How To Prevent From It

Hello everyone!! Today I'm gonna tell about a cool & funny hacking technique named Shoulder Surfing. Mostly among you would've use this technique before too, but never knew about its name, so let me clear what is shoulder surfing in brief:

Shoulder surfing is the way to obtaining information by looking over any person's shoulder (It's similar to cheating in exam from someone sitting ahead you). For e.g. while filling your personal data like email, password, security pin or while doing transactions from ATMs, person behind you can see what you're typing & grab the sensitive information. It seems weird, but persons who're very slow in typing, mostly become victim of it. Shoulder surfing can also be done through long distance by using binoculars.

How to prevent from this hacking technique?

• As I recommend, type fast as you can.
• Know who's behind you while typing.
• At last but not least, pick strong passwords for email accounts, transactions (so that the person behind you even could not make a guess about what you typed).
  
  And the best way I found on Google:

haha :)

Tutorial On Information Gathering / Foot Printing (Hacking Technique)

Information gathering or Foot printing is the basic technique of hacking which includes gathering maximum information about the target computer systems. It is a very important part of hacking because the more information about target system we have, more the number of attacks we can launch. Information gathering is the important technique because all other process of hacking based on information that you have. Therefore we must know what information to gather, where to find it, how to collect it & how to process the collected information.

Let's start with an example: Suppose your designation is as a hacker in your company & company wants some information about the target system like physical location, IP records and some details about the specific domain. What you've is only the domain name (e.g. www.example.com) or IP address. There are some practical steps you need to follow while gathering information about target system:

• First step is to finding the IP address:
  
  • Go to command prompt> type ping www.example.com
  • It will give you IP of the target system.
• After getting IP, next step is to know about the physical location of the victim:
  • Go to IP2location from here, enter the IP in search field & hit enter.
  • It will give you details about the physical location of the victim.
• Now, we have to find out the details of the domain (example.com):
  
  • Go to who.is or whois.domaindetails.com & type the site address of victim.
  • It will give you details about domain owner, server, domain expiry/creation date.\
• Use Traceroute for tracing the websites path:
  
  • Check out my post on Trace Website Path Using CMD.
• Use Google for getting more information about the victim.

Following above methods will help you in getting maximum information about the target system & if you need further information, then google it with your queries.

Some of the tools used for information gathering are nslookup, traceroute & Nmap. Very soon, I will explain about Information Gathering technique using Back Track.

A Guide To Google Hacking Techniques

Hi everyone!! As we all know Google is the major search engine and #1 ranking site and it's like a part of our daily routine.

Google hacking does not mean to hack Google's site/server, it means likely to be smart in Google search. Almost every kind of information is provided there, but the thing is how you search your queries. In this post I've provided a PPT which is all about Google hacking techniques. I'm sure after completing the whole PPT, you would become more expert in Google search.

PPT is all about learning the basics of Google hacking and finding vulnerabilities in the websites.

You can download it from here.

Whether you search your queries as smart worker or hard worker in Google, depends upon how much you know about it! so start your smart work from right now.

How To Protect In Cafe/Public Computers While Surfing Internet?

People who surf internet on cafe/public computers, are more vulnerable to be hacked, reason is simple! They are unaware from the software installed on public computers, their privileges. It's always secure to access internet from your personal computers, but some times you have to access it from other places like cafe, your friend computer. So what if you wanna to secure yourself from these hacks? Two things you must keep in mind while surfing from pubic computers:

1. Always prefer to private browsing. Mostly people are unaware from this wonderful feature of browsers. So what is private browsing and how to enable it?

• Private Browsing allows you to browse the Internet without saving any information about which sites and pages you’ve visited, private browsing do not save Visited pages, History, Passwords, Cookies and Cache files.
• For enabling it, press Ctrl+Shift+P for firefox and IE users (For chrome use shortcut Ctrl+Shift+N or check my other post Incognito Window In Google Chrome For Safe Browsing), a prompting window will ask you for starting private browsing.

2. Use On-Screen Keyboard. What to do if you think there is suspicious keylogger installed on system. Don't take risk, use on-screen keyboard. Keyloggers captures information from normal keyboard only. So whenever you do login on your personal internet banking accounts or else, always prefer to use virtual keyboard. You can open it by typing OSK in run.

Tutorial On DNS Cache Poisoning (Redirect abc.com By Entering xyz.com In Address Bar)

Hello guys! Today I'm going to post about a hacking technique named "DNS Spoofing or DNS Cache Poisoning". DNS cache poisoning is a computer hacking attack, whereby data is introduced into a Domain Name System (DNS) name server's cache database, causing the name server to return an incorrect IP address, diverting traffic to another computer (often the attacker's).

This trick is commonly used by hackers for redirecting original site to fake site (like opening Facebook, Gmail would open fake facebook, gmail).

Let's understand it by taking an example:

• Go to C:\Windows\ System32\ Drivers\ etc\ Hosts
• Open it with notepad.
• Write 67.195.160.76 www.google.com below 127.0.0.1 localhost like that:
  127.0.0.1 localhost
  67.195.160.76  www.google.com

Where 67.195.160.76 is IP address of yahoo, you can change it whatever you want. If you are thinking about knowing IP address of any site, then go to command prompt> Type ping site name, for e.g. ping www.facebook.com. 

Note: Even you can use it for phishing purpose.

Is Your Mobile Device Hacker-Proof?

This is a guest post by Alyse.

If it's connected to the Internet, it can be hacked. For years, this was mainly a concern to PC users and IT guys, but anything that achieves mainstream usage and market share will eventually attract black hat types. From greedy cyber-criminals to malicious joy riders, the latest lure is the Internet-connected device in everyone's pocket.

Unfortunately, the very things that make our Smartphone’s and tablets so appealing to us -- mobility, ease of use, always-on communications -- render mobile devices even more exposed to the hijinks of hackers. Plus, let's face it -- most of the people walking around with tablets and Smartphone’s aren't going to take the same basic security precautions that have become second-nature to "serious" PC and IT folks.

With that in mind, let's run down a checklist of what you can and should be doing to make your constant mobile companion as safe as possible.

They're Just Little Computers

Although hackers need a different set of tools to gain access of a mobile device, many of the vulnerabilities are very similar to well-known PC security risks. Browser exploits, email phishing, password cracking -- all of the classic holes can be found on mobile devices.

How to protect yourself: Simple common security precautions: use strong passwords, don't open unknown attachments or click on unknown links, use HTTPS whenever you can while browsing, pay even closer attention to security certificate warnings, and avoid transmitting personal and financial data as much as possible (and never unencrypted!).

There's an App for That

iOS users don't yet need too much app help for security and antivirus tasks, but the Google or Amazon app markets should be your first stop for mobile security and antivirus solutions.

How to protect yourself: Use one of the big security names like avast!, Norton, and Kapersky, or a proven mobile-specific security developer such as Lookout or Antivirus Free by Creative Apps.

Cool the Hotspot

Many mobile devices, especially tablets, regularly connect to the Internet via Wi-Fi. This means that they share all of the risks of any wireless network, which can be infiltrated by any self-respecting hacker with a sniffer, or simply riding on the same public hotspot.

How to protect yourself: Practice basic router sense by changing the default login and SSID using strong passwords, enabling WEP / WPA encryption, restricting allowed devices (MAC filtering), and making sure the firewall is active. On the device side, turn off any "auto-connect to Wi-Fi networks" settings, and disable Wi-Fi completely when it's not needed. In addition to being more secure, this will noticeably increase your battery life.

Stop Malicious Apps Before They Start

This tends to be a bigger problem with Android, because Apple has historically been very restrictive when reviewing app submissions. Still, some things get by the review process on any mobile OS, so you should be very careful when downloading and installing, especially if you are "side loading" (i.e., installing an APK from a non-market source).

How to protect yourself: Don't leave everything up to the antivirus software. Do your research before adding apps. Check for plenty of reviews (number of downloads means nothing). Note how long the app has been available, and investigate developer websites (and any other apps they may have). Think carefully about the requested permissions -- a flashlight app does not need to know your location or connect to the Internet.

Location, Location, Location

Location tracking is a common worry for most Smartphone users, all the more so since Apple and Google were questioned by the federal government for keeping detailed logs of user coordinates. The good news is that GPS data is securely transmitted, but the bad news is that many phones use a technology called "Assisted GPS" which makes an insecure connection to cell towers. Because it's a low-level process, hackers could get access to the processor itself, enabling remote takeover.

How to protect yourself: Find the "Assisted GPS" setting on your phone, and make sure that it's turned off. This will make it a little harder for you to get your exact location, but it will close a major hole in your mobile security.

When Texts Attack

Simple SMS / MMS text messages can be used by hackers, for DoS attacks or in many of the same ways that email is vulnerable. But there's no "spam filter" for texts, and SMS is "always on" by default, so there may be no way of avoiding opening potentially malware-bearing messages with links or embedded multimedia attachments (pictures, graphics, and sounds). Luckily, SMS exploits are relatively rare, but the sheer vulnerability of them is appealing to hackers.

How to protect yourself: You'll be safest if you can turn off the automatic multimedia display so that you need to click on any attachment first, but not all devices have this function. If you get a text from an unknown number, it may be safest to delete it ASAP before reading it.

Armed with these tips, you should be as safe as possible from the black hat hackers out there. As we've seen, there's nothing that can't be hacked, but if you make it difficult enough, they'll go find something easier to mess with. Oh, and one final tip: the most time-honored way to gain access to a device is to simply pick it up and walk away. It's not very high-tech, but keeping an eye on your Smartphone and tablet at all times may be the best advice of all.

About the author:

Alyse is a marketing, photography, and tech addict who spends her time investigating the next generation of technology. When she is not brushing up on her art of the scientific know how in the world, you can find her contributing to ATTSavings or on Twitter @Alyse_1.

What Is Phishing And How To Prevent Getting Hacked?

This is a guest po​​​​​st by Fenix Raw.

The problem with phishing is that most of the people are unaware of the whole issue of phishing. Web users, who are already in threat from various elements like virus, spyware etc, are facing a larger threat than any of them, but what is phishing? And how can it harm you? These are the questions, which will be answered in the next few lines.

Phishing

Phishing is an online scam, where people associated with it pose as legitimate website or links and ask for the details of the user, like the personal, contact and financial details. Then they fraudulently access your accounts with the information provided by you, and leave you bankrupt. The problem is so overwhelmingly huge that it costs US government about one billion dollars every year.

How Does the Phishing Scam Work?

Most of the time, a phishing scam starts off with the victim receiving an email to his or her email account. Apparently, these mails look legitimate and from a trusted source. The most common types include emails from bank, financial companies like brokerage or even from credit card companies. These emails claim that your account is going to face some serious impending problem, like delay in payments or account closure, and demands attention from your side. They also provide the solution to the same like changing the account details, like username, password etc to get rid of the problem.

The same applies for the spoof websites or rather to say the mirrored website. It may seem to you that you are entering your details into a legitimate website. However, in reality, the website you are browsing is simply a fake one.

Once you provide them with your account details, the financial account of yours is now vulnerable to them, as they are the ones who can hack and operate it easily. Most of the time, it is observed that they usually utilize the account information to get loan grants and credits from the bank, leaving a huge financial problem for you.

How to Prevent Phishing?

Once you have fallen in to the trap of some phishing scam, it may take years to get rid of it. It is always said that prevention is better than cure and this applies to phishing scams too. One of the easiest ways to avoid phishing attacks is to have your anti-virus updates regularly. Also, make sure that you are installing an anti-virus, which has got email scanner and link scanners, which detects the safety of a link before you click over them.

A good spam control program can also provide protection from phishing. The most difficult part is to detect fake websites and mails from the real ones, as the scammers do not keep any single stones unturned to make them look like real ones.

Getting all the security settings of your browser turned “On” will also help you to prevent yourself from falling in some phishing scam. Browse safe and be away from the dangers of phishing.

About the author:

Guest post by Fenix Raw from ExamsKey Looking for Exams key exam assistance? Let’s take benefit of Exams key self-paced Security+ Certification Preparation Certification training material and pass your IT certification on first attempt with guaranty.

Steps To Prevent Getting Hacked

This is a guest p​​​​​ost by Fenix Raw.

A security threat to your PC is a common problem these days and users need to address a little caution when it comes to the safety of their systems. We hear more and more reports about the security levels of systems being compromised due to being hacked.

Here are a few steps and pointers that will help and guide the users to prevent their systems from being hacked:

Antivirus Solutions

There is no running away from this. There are still quite a few people, who feel the need to install antivirus solutions on their system. Many of them also fail to update their antivirus software’s regularly, which makes them outdated and less effective. In order to prevent your system from being hacked it is absolutely crucial to have a good antivirus solution. 

There are many good brands of antivirus solutions available on the internet and moreover, many of them are free. Still it would be recommended for the user to go in for a paid version as they are the safest choice. They have better scanning potential and some of the good ones and also many best anti-viruses are available online.

Importance of Firewalls

Firewalls also play a crucial role in protecting your system from being hacked. It acts as a barrier and keeps the threats out of the network. This will prevent the influx of Trojans, malware and other forms of threats.  Hence, it is important for all the users to implement a strong firewall that work effectively to prevent possibly any such threats.

Clear Your Browser Periodically 

This is another effective step that enhances security levels in your system. Hackers often target the users through their surfing habits. While Cookies do not pose any threat to your PC, they give an idea about your surfing habits. Hence, erase your cookies from time to time to avoid detection. 

A lot of users also have the tendency to store passwords on the websites and they frequent to initiate quick log ins. This could possibly be a little dangerous, especially if the user uses the same password for many accounts. Hence, erase browser history along with site passwords on a more periodic basis.

Creating Backups

Always create backups of important data that you have on your system. Sometimes, virus attacks can lead to loss of crucial data that was important for the user. 

Scan Attachments

Be wary when you receive attachments through e-mail from unknown sources. While today’s major email providers comes with scan protection, it still pays to be cautious when it comes to receiving mails from unknown sources. 

Always scan the mail before opening, as it is one of the easiest methods through which your system can get infected. Also, take care to ensure you do not send unsafe links or attachments to your friends and colleagues.  

Keep OS Updated

Updating the OS on a regular basis is also very helpful towards preventing security threats on the system. In case you are looking for updates in Windows, you can look for them online.

About the author:

Guest post by Fenix Raw from ExamsKey Looking for Exams key exam assistance? Let’s take benefit of Exams key self-paced CCNA Wireless Certification Preparation Certification training material and pass your IT certification on first attempt with guaranty.