Cyber Lab

2/3. Techniques used in password cracking:

Brute-force attacks – The attacker tries several possible passwords in an attempt to guess the password. If the password is a 4-digit number, for example, the attacker would have to try every one of the 10000 combinations. Brute-force attacks usually involve a word-list file. This is a text file containing a list of words taken from a dictionary. A program then tries each word and common combinations. Because brute-force attacks take time, complex passwords take much longer to guess. A few password brute-force tools include Ophcrack, L0phtCrack, THC Hydra, RainbowCrack, and Medusa.