Skip to main content

Ethical Hacking - Email Hijacking

Email Hijacking, or email hacking, is a widespread menace nowadays. It works by using the following three techniques which are email spoofing, social engineering tools, or inserting viruses in a user computer.

Email Spoofing

In email spoofing, the spammer sends emails from a known domain, so the receiver thinks that he knows this person and opens the mail. Such mails normally contain suspicious links, doubtful content, requests to transfer money, etc.
Example

Social Engineering

Spammers send promotional mails to different users, offering huge discount and tricking them to fill their personal data. You have tools available in Kali that can drive you to hijack an email.
Social Engineering Email hacking can also be done by phishing techniques. See the following screenshot.
Phishing The links in the email may install malware on the user’s system or redirect the user to a malicious website and trick them into divulging personal and financial information, such as passwords, account IDs or credit card details.
Phishing attacks are widely used by cybercriminals, as it is far easier to trick someone into clicking a malicious links in the email than trying to break through a computer’s defenses.

Inserting Viruses in a User System

The third technique by which a hacker can hijack your email account is by infecting your system with a virus or any other kind of malware. With the help of a virus, a hacker can take all your passwords.

How to detect if your email has been hijacked?

  • The recipients of spam emails include a bunch of people you know.
  • You try to access your account and the password no longer works.
  • You try to access the “Forgot Password” link and it does not go to the expected email.
  • Your Sent Items folder contains a bunch of spams you are not aware of sending.

Quick tips

In case you think that your email got hijacked, then you need to take the following actions −
  • Change the passwords immediately.
  • Notify your friends not to open links that they receive from your email account.
  • Contact the authorities and report that your account has been hacked.
  • Install a good antivirus on your computer and update it.
  • Set up double authentication password if it is supported.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

IMPORTANCE AND ADVANTAGES OF SIWES

STUDENTS INDUSTRIAL WORK EXPERIENCE SCHEME (SIWES) The Industrial Training/Students Industrial Work Experience Scheme, IT/SIWES is a new Directorate under the Vice-Chancellor’s Office.  It was established on 20th April, 2012 The Students Industrial Work Experience Scheme (SIWES) is a skills training programme designed to expose and prepare students of universities and other tertiary institutions for the Industrial Work situation they are likely to meet after graduation.  It is also a planned and structured programme based on stated and specific career objectives which are geared towards developing the occupational competencies of participants (Mafe, 2009).  Consequently, the SIWES programme is a compulsory graduation requirement for all Nigerian university students offering certain courses. The Students Industrial Work Experience Scheme (SIWES), is the accepted training pro...

Animal Cell

 By Lasisi Halima Billy   All animal cells are multicellular. They are eukaryotic cells.  A nimal cells  are surrounded by plasma membrane and it contains the nucleus and organel les that are membrane bound. A nimal cells are of various sizes and have irregular shapes.  Most of the cells size range between 1 and 100 micrometers and are visible only with help of microscope.  Trillions of cells are found in the human body.  There are many different types of cells, approximately 210 distinct cell types in adult human body.   Animal Cell Definition    Animal cells are eukarytoic. Animal cells are have outer boundary known as the plasma membrane.  T he nucleus and the organelles of the cell are bound by a membrane.  The genetic material (DNA) in animal cells...

Light Microscope vs Electron Microscope.

Both light microscopes and electron microscopes use radiation (light or electron beams) to form larger and more detailed images of objects (e.g. biological specimens, materials, crystal structures, etc.) than the human eye can produce unaided. (See also: What is eyesight ? ) An electron microscope is a microscope that uses beams of electrons instead of rays of visible light to form highly magnified images of tiny areas materials or biological specimens. Comparing light vs electron microscopes is made more complicated by the fact that there are different types of electron microscopes. The two main types of electron microscope are the Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM) and Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). Other types of electron microscope include the Scanning Tunneling Microscope (STM) and Field Emission Transmission Microscope (FE-TEM). Brief notes, see the tables lower down this page for figures, explanations and comments: ...