A brute force attack attempts to crack a password or key through automated trial and error.
This is one of the most well-known and simplest cyber-attacks out there and they tend to be pretty reliable.
The hacker tries various permutations and combinations of usernames and passwords until they find one that works.
- The most basic form of a brute force attack is the dictionary attack wherein the hackers go through a dictionary of all possible passwords and try them one by one. This is simple to execute but is a bit outdated.
- Recent iterations of brute force, like exhaustive key search, are a lot more efficient since modern computers are very fast.
- The credential recycling attack reuses usernames and passwords that the attacker got from other data breaches.
- The reverse brute force attack tries to reverse-engineer the username using a password or other piece of data
Make sure your passwords are long and not common words. The length is much more important than the difficulty, as XKCD explained:
Categories: Hackers & Tech Stuff
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