Last year was a year when hacking was a trend with 22 billion records, some of which paralyzed a country for periods of several days. Hacking is a latent danger in cyberspace and although it is not the same today as it was a decade or two ago, simple hacking techniques are still used. One of them is the so-called hacker IP address technique.
Why are IP address hacking techniques still important?
Because if a hacker has your IP address, he can know some important information such as your real location, what you visit on the internet, to some financial transactions. For ordinary people, knowing just the IP address is not a trophy but for a hacker? It was a dream gift! Every IP address can be exploited to some degree and when someone gets to that level, the victim has the potential to suffer quite a lot of harm.
What is an IP address?
We must first understand what an IP address is. It is a number associated with a particular network or device (laptop, PC, or smartphone). Each device usually has two different IP addresses; IPv4 and IPv6. The latter is more complicated to anticipate the possibility that all addresses will be used up in the not-too-distant future.
Each IP address contains information about the accessor’s country of origin or network origin, city, Internet network provider, type of IP address, and GPS. Again, this general information is very useful for any cybercriminal even if they look “general”.
How was your IP address hacked?
There are many ways, to be honest, but here are the most common ways:
– Through fraudulent emails. Often called phishing, this is a fraudulent technique of sending booby-trapped emails disguised as emails from popular, legitimate services. Phishing always includes a tracking pixel that allows the victim’s IP address to be obtained as soon as the victim opens the email.
– Infected attachments. This type of attachment is commonly distributed via communication channels such as SMS, email, and social media private message features. As soon as this attachment is opened by the victim, it will immediately spread the malicious code which will “stick” to the device. The malicious code will in turn retrieve various information, of course, one of which is the IP address.
– A link that has added tracking information. This type of link is usually delivered through online advertisements.
– Redirecting web traffic, usually via tabs hidden in the background. The result is that the victim will arrive at the “wrong page” and be directed to fill in some personal data. In the process of filling in the information, IP address theft will easily occur.
– A virus that infects through malicious extensions. Viruses of this type can immediately track information such as IP address, and operating system, to the “unthinkable” such as screen resolution.
– Hacking a Wi-Fi router to intercept all traffic into and out of the victim’s device.
Those are some IP address theft paths that should be known. Of course, several ways can be used to anticipate them, one of which is to use a VPN service.
