Orkut is a highly successful social networking site in Brazil, India, and Pakistan. Orkut is much more famous than any of the other social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace in these third world countries. The Orkut demographics show the penetration of this social networking tool with above 51% from Brazil (http://www.orkut.co.in/Main#MembersAll.aspx ). Developed by Orkut Büyükkökten and later bought by Google, this social networking tool is growing far greater than any other.
With its popularity grows the need of hacking into some one’s Orkut account. We are getting several pages of comments in this website on how to break into an Orkut account, how to break an Orkut password etc. As always our humble reply, we don’t endorse hacking. We would neither help anyone out there to break into an Orkut account nor provide any help if they have forgotten the passwords.
One thing people forget is that Orkut like any other web based service stores the password in encrypted format and its just not possible to figure out the password even with the help of employees who are working there. How is it possible? Without going into technical details, let us explain things in a simple way.
When you register for a web-based service, you provide the password. One thing most trusted websites do is that it encrypts the password provided by you. The encryption is not reversible i.e. no one can decode the string back to the original format.
Suppose your password is “MyPassword”. This password will be stored in Orkut (or any other server) in encrypted format… something like – MyPassword => khkjhd877e8q78e8634but3874@63. There are several encryption techniques available like MD5, SHA etc. These encryption algorithms are not reversible i.e. you can convert “MyPassword” to “khkjhd877e8q78e8634but3874@63” but “khkjhd877e8q78e8634but3874@63” can’t be converted back to “MyPassword”.
Whenever you enter the user name and password, the website converts your password into Md5 or SHA or what ever it is and cross check. So not even a Google employee can retrieve your password. Well, it can be reset.
Orkut passwords could be compromised only if you are
- Using a computer with a key logger installed
- Using a computer affected with some Trojan or virus
- Using other websites where you have used the same password and which is not encrypted
So the next time you think of hijacking a girl friend’s Orkut account, remember it’s not going to be that easy.
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