How Do Hackers Steal Your Wi-Fi Password?

 

How do hackers steal your Wi-Fi password? And how to prevent it?

Hackers know how to hack your Wi-Fi password. Here’s why and how you can prevent your password from being cracked.

Your Wi-Fi password is important to protect; After all, if it leaks, people can ride on your network and do whatever they like with your internet connection. However, there are ways people can take your password and use it to make your connection look good.

Hackers know how to hack your Wi-Fi password. Here’s how someone can attack your Wi-Fi, how they can steal your password, and what they can do with it.

Why Hackers Want Your Wi-Fi Password?

If a hacker gets hold of the password to your Wi-Fi network, they can use your Internet connection to do whatever they want. It also has the scope to use your data to stream videos and download files, an illegal activity.

Also, logging into your router is the first step to accessing its devices. If you use network-connected hard drives, a hacker will be interested in sneaking into your router and storing sensitive information.

There are many ways a hacker can target a router, but we’re focusing specifically on how they can get your Wi-Fi password. This attack method requires the hacker to be physically near your home so they can use the password to connect to your Wi-Fi network.

But “physically close?” If you’ve ever taken a laptop to the park, you know how, the farther you go, the weaker the connection. Finally, you have no connection.

Whenever someone wants to use your Wi-Fi network, they use this same connection. As such, their potential locations are limited to your neighbors and possibly your neighbors’ neighbors. If you live in an apartment, the residences around you have better connectivity to your Wi-Fi.

How do hackers get neighbors’ Wi-Fi passwords?

If you trust your neighbors completely, there is little reason to believe they will try to hack your network. However, if you want to stay safe, let’s check out the ways they can lay siege to your Wi-Fi network and how you can protect yourself.

1. Cracking open insecure passwords

If someone wants to open your password, they can try one of two methods. They can start guessing your password through brute force, or they can destroy the security algorithm.

If they choose the former method, the hacker is looking for a weak and insecure password. You know the kind: passwords that are just “open sesame” or “123456” or “password“. These are very easy to break free and allow hacker access to the Wi-Fi network.

Fortunately, routers these days come pre-programmed with strong, unique passwords. Likewise, if you keep the default password, the chances of a hacker getting in are less.

However, these routers also allow people to change the Wi-Fi password, which can be weak. Likewise, if you or someone else changes the password to something simpler, you may want to consider creating a stronger one.

If they can’t guess the password, hackers can pry open vulnerable security algorithms. Generally, the older the algorithm, the easier it is for a hacker to access.

At the very bottom of the barrel is WEP. This algorithm is not used or supported by most modern-day routers, but some older hardware still uses it. A hacker can use tools and unlock a WEP-secured router in a maximum of one hour.

On the other hand, you have WPA2 and WPA3. These take a long time to crack open (sometimes years), so using both of those algorithms will prevent a hacker from going bust… at least for a long time.

2. Finding and using the default router password

If you don’t change your router’s password, a hacker can figure out what it is and use it to gain access to your Wi-Fi. Fortunately, routers have come a long way since the days of “username: admin, password: admin”; Modern ones have a unique password with generated, numbers, lower case and uppercase letters.

This feature has a password on your router that is hard to crack the moment you plug it in, without any extra effort from you. However, you still need to log into your own router, so the device will have a default password printed somewhere.

The password on the back of the router makes it easier to remember, but it also means your router is essentially broadcasting its own password. If you put your router by a window, people can peek in and see the password. Similarly, if neighbors come to visit, they can note the code before they leave.

Also, remember to take care of the default password. Either hide it so people from the outside can’t see it, or change the password to something unique and don’t write it down.

3. Getting password through social communication

Let’s say your neighbor comes over for a while. They notice they can’t get a good data signal on their phone, so they ask you if they can hop your Wi-Fi. You, being the good neighbor you are, tell them the password.

They may have legitimate issues getting in touch, or they may have wanted to get your password in the first place. Either way, they now have your password stored on their phone, and they can now retrieve it later and use it for other devices when they get back home.

The solution seems easy: don’t give out your password. However, if you don’t give out your password, you’ll feel like a terrible host when visitors need to use your internet.

The solution? Guest networks. These are “side networks” that broadcast alongside your mainstream. You give your guests a password to connect to this side network.

Best of all, you can reset the password on the guest network. And you don’t need to update your password on all your devices, because they are all connected to the main network.

Wi-Fi Passwords: When in doubt, change it!

We’ve made a pretty damning case for Wi-Fi hackers so far. After all, if someone gets your password, they can use your Internet connection to perform illegal actions or steal data stored on your Wi-Fi-connected hard drives.

But never forget that you have the upper hand when it comes to your own router. Since it is physically in your home, you always have access to it and can block any hacker who tries to abuse your internet connection.

For example, modern-day routers tell you how many devices are connected to them. You can see this information by logging into your router’s settings and checking the network statistics. If any devices look suspicious, or there is a lot of data not leaving the router, you can change the router password to lock out any hackers.

You usually need an administrator username and password to access your router’s settings, and the password must be different from the Wi-Fi network. Likewise, a hacker cannot access the settings, leaving you free to change the password without them interfering.

Even if a hacker somehow gets the admin password and locks you out, you’ll still have physical access to the router. And a good router will have a factory reset button that will erase everything the hacker did and let you get your hardware back.

Accordingly, you should be careful and protect your Wi-Fi router from hackers. However, at the same time, don’t worry too much; It’s easy to root out any internet thieves and get your network back.

Securing your router

Hackers want your Wi-Fi passwords for a few reasons. Fortunately, because of how Wi-Fi signals work, only people in your immediate vicinity are authorized to use it. As such, you can protect yourself accordingly and stop people from crawling your router.

If you really want to lock your router, there are more things you can do on top of the tips we gave you. From disabling WPS to changing the SSID, there’s a lot you can do to keep your router secure.