best way to avoid hacking

I have seen many posts on here about people who have been hacked and i would to make sure i have all the right security measures to prevent it.

I have already read on another forum that someone is trying to hack my board and password and i need to stop them.

What is THE best thing(s) to stop someone from hacking you?
How do people manage to hack others and how can it be avoided?

all halp greatky welcomed!

If they were real Hackers stand behind them with a loaded gun!
But as your problem refers to script kiddies here's your answers.
1. set your member registration to admin approval only.
2. Set your founders and all future admins passwords to alpha numeric, the bigger password the better eg f33l1ng5.
3. Make sure you do not accept admins until they have been on your board for some time.
4. Allow no guest access to your forum.

While there may be other ways of securing your forum these are the basic ones to use.

To that list I would add:
- Forbid that mods and admins, especially admins can recover their password.
- Enable that admins have to retype their password when entering the admin panel and hammer in their brains not to save it in the wizard. (So their friends might can login through saved password but can't acces admin panel)
-Make sure you can contact your admins directly through IMs or email addresses

Admin Panel -> General -> Security

And :

1. Administration Panel
2. General tab
3. Security
4. Do this :

And increase your password`s length to 24 characters.


How to create a good password, my tutorial
Password Generators
Password Checker

Edit : Mr.Killerguitar you just posted while i was writting
Edit2 : I meant 24 characters. Not 20.

ok, thanks everyone. ill do what you suggested.

what is it hackers do to actually obtain a password (not that i want to do it myself), but whats all the meta tag and script changing?
it just confuses me thinking about it.

-=BleSsEd_GuY=- wrote:PROBLEM SOLVED? TOPIC CLOSED '_'

You do know ur NOT a moderator, hence you shouldnt say things like this.
Also colored messages is reserved for staff only, Remember that?

You could also have a password like this

L592Ohus_$^ << obviously it isnt going to happen because it is so hard to remember, but its an example.

darren1 wrote:L592Ohus_$^ << obviously it isnt going to happen because it is so hard to remember, but its an example.

Hm ? This is easy to remember, lol. At this moment i know 5 of my passwords that are over 20 characters long and i type each of them in 2-3 seconds. Is it just me or am i missing something here :O

Tarogasini, Don't take this the wrong way, but I found your 'Little Tutorial' To be quite offensive, and not 'Good Admin' Material.

Decrease the number of log in attempts a user can do.

GameCrunchy wrote:Decrease the number of log in attempts a user can do.

whereabouts can i do that in admin please?

-=BleSsEd_GuY=- wrote:
PROBLEM SOLVED? TOPIC CLOSED '_'

not quite.....

"Decrease the number of log in attempts a user can do."

I would also like to know where I can alter this please share.
As for your question on how a hacker obtains your password, usually they use what is called "brute force cracking" this is when a program checks millions of passwords within a short time against a known user name.
This is why the less log in attempts is a good thing.

Heals - yea i thought someone could be offended after reading it Sadly this is how the things are. If you dont care about your privacy, nobody else will.

Common, thats good admin material. If i wouldnt care i would simply write something lame like others usually do and their stuff doesnt really make you wanna change things. And if somebody will really think on himself, because he has 1 letter as a password and then change it - my point achieved.

Password cracking theory + link to a most famous cracker

Edit : Link added after reading couldbe`s post. I thought it would fit nice in here, because i made a review and conclusion on password cracking myself.