How to Hack Email Accounts
Have you ever wondered how cybercriminals hack email passwords? At some point, you may have wondered how to hack email accounts just for the sake of preventing your account from getting hacked. There are several techniques that you can explore to hack the password of an email account. No email account is immune to hacking. Here are some practical ways of hacking email accounts.
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.
Keylogging
Arguably, this is the easiest option for most people who want to learn how to hack email passwords. Keylogging entails recording every keystroke that is typed in by a user on a computer keyboard. You can do so using a spy program known as a Keylogger.
You don’t need special skills to install the program on a computer. Keyloggers also operate in stealth mode, something that makes them hard to detect once installed. If you don’t have physical access to a target computer, there’s no need to worry because some keyloggers offer remote installation.
Keylogging is arguably the most straightforward hacking technique that hackers use to steal sensitive information from victims. Besides email hacking, Keylogging can be used to spy on your target’s text messages, phone calls, and other passwords.
Phishing
This is a more complicated email hacking technique compared to Keylogging. Phishing entails the use of spoofed webpages that are designed to be identical to those of legitimate websites. When carrying out this social engineering hacking technique, phishers typically create fake login pages that resemble Gmail, Yahoo, or other email service providers. Once you attempt to enter your login credentials on the fake login pages, hackers will be able to steal the information right away.
Similarly, phishers can send an email that resembles what Google or Yahoo typically send. Often, such emails contain links to fake login pages, requesting you to update your email account information or change the password. An online persona of someone you know can also be created and used to hoodwink you into providing your email login credentials. To successfully execute a phishing attack, one needs considerable hacking knowledge with prior experience in HTML, scripting languages such as PHP/JSP, and CSS.
In most jurisdictions, phishing is considered a criminal offense. Unfortunately, enabling two-factor authentication for your email accounts can’t help. Therefore you should be vigilant before giving out your email login credentials. Double-check the web address from where the email is emanating before providing your details. If you didn’t request a password change in the first place, ignore suspicious emails that ask you to change the password.
Password Guessing and Resetting
This is another social engineering technique used by email hackers. If you are learning how to hack email accounts, you shouldn’t worry about the password guessing/resetting technique. It’s easier to use this technique to access the mailboxes of people whom you know than strangers. The procedure involves manipulating the target victim’s mind to try and figure out his/her personal information.
Password guessing and resetting require impeccable thinking power and social skills, thus the need to know the intended victim considerably well. Often, hackers who use this technique are close family members, friends, or colleagues. Such individuals have considerable knowledge about you, including your hobbies, birthdate, and other personal details. Therefore, it’s easier for them to figure out your email password, and in particular, the security question.
Inserting Viruses in a User System
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.
Emails Vulnerabilities
A vulnerability is a weakness that can, at some point, be exploited by cybercriminals. The same goes for email vulnerabilities which can thus be any vulnerability in your email protection system.
Ignored parts of an email
The symbols: +, – and {} in rare occasions can be used for tagging and ignored by most e-mail servers
Comments between parentheses () at the beginning or the end will also be ignored
- E.g. john.doe(intigriti)@example.com → john.doe@example.com
Whitelist bypass
- inti(;inti@inti.io;)@whitelisted.com
- inti@inti.io(@whitelisted.com)
- inti+(@whitelisted.com;)@inti.io
IPs
You can also use IPs as domain named between square brackets:
- john.doe@[127.0.0.1]
- john.doe@[IPv6:2001:db8::1]
Other vulns
Third party SSO
XSS
Some services like github or salesforce allows you to create an email address with XSS payloads on it. If you can use this providers to login on other services and this services aren’t sanitising correctly the email, you could cause XSS.
Account-Takeover
If a SSO service allows you to create an account without verifying the given email address (like salesforce) and then you can use that account to login in a different service that trusts salesforce, you could access any account. Note that salesforce indicates if the given email was or not verified but so the application should take into account this info.
Reply-To
You can send an email using From: company.com and Replay-To: attacker.com and if any automatic reply is sent due to the email was sent from an internal address the attacker may be able to receive that response.
Hard Bounce Rate
Some applications like AWS have a Hard Bounce Rate (in AWS is 10%), that whenever is overloaded the email service is blocked.A hard bounce is an email that couldn’t be delivered for some permanent reasons.
Maybe the email’s a fake address, maybe the email domain isn’t a real domain, or maybe the email recipient’s server won’t accept emails) , that means from total of 1000 emails if 100 of them were fake or were invalid that caused all of them to bounce, AWS SES will block your service.So, if you are able to send mails (maybe invitations) from the web application to any email address, you could provoke this block by sending hundreds of invitations to nonexistent users and domains: Email service DoS.
Myths About How to Hack Email Accounts
In your quest to learn how to hack email passwords, there are several things that you should keep in mind. Lots of websites misguide readers on email hacking techniques. There isn’t a ready-made program for hacking email accounts, except the keylogger. Therefore, you should be wary of websites that purport to sell programs that can help you hack someone else’s email account.
Likewise, you should keep off websites that claim to sell tutorials that can teach you how to hack email passwords. You may even be surprised to learn that some of these websites ask you to provide your email address. This is the precursor to most email hacking incidents. It would be tragic for you to lose your email account in an attempt to hack someone else’s account.
Not everyone who learns how to hack passwords intends to be a cybercriminal. This is a skill worth learning since it puts you in a better position to secure your email account. Email hacking is also a must-have skill for those who want to become ethical hackers. When learning how to hack emails, you shouldn’t forget about securing your own. To secure your users’ emails from hackers, contact nuEduSec for a demo or trial of our cutting edge cloud-based platform that provides protection to students at school, in the classroom and even at home.