What is a Brute Force Attack?

What is a Brute Force Attack?

A brute force attack is a technique that cybercriminals use to acquire the login credentials of their victim via the trial and error method. Hackers need to guess all the possible combinations to crack the password.

This is a traditional form of attack but remains efficient and popular among hackers. Because cracking can take between a few seconds and several years depending on the length and complexity of the password.

How Brute Force Attack Works?

Brute force attacks are generally used for collecting personal and sensitive information such as passwords, user names, and PINs by using a script, cracking tools like THC-Hydra, or similar programs. Hackers have to constantly try every possible combination to crack passwords and usernames.

The brute force attack’s goals include:

• Theft of personal information such as passwords, login information, and other data that is used to access banking details and online accounts.
• Collecting credentials for selling to a third party.
• Using victim’s account to spread fake content under victim’s name.
• Defacement of websites and other public domain information to harm a particular company’s reputation.
• Redirecting domains to sites having malicious viruses.

They can also be used to achieve good benefits. Many IT specialists use this attack to test the network security and strength of the encryption method used in the network.

Types of Brute Force Attack

There are various types of brute force attacks:

Hybrid Brute Force Attacks

You might have heard about dictionary attacks. These are some of the most common types of brute force attacks and use a word list to break passwords from a dictionary. In other words, a Hybrid brute force attack is a combination of a dictionary attack and a brute force attack. Other attacks use a commonly used list of passwords. For example, if your password is “password123,” your password can easily be cracked by a brute force bot. So, it is important to create a strong password that helps in preventing your password from being cracked.

Reverse Brute Force Attacks

Reverse brute force attacks don’t target a particular username. It uses a group of passwords or individual passwords against a group of possible usernames.

Credential Stuffing

If a hacker cracks the username and password of a victim’s account, he/she can access several websites and network resources with this information. Many users select the same password for easy access to many different websites. Taking prevention by using multi-factor authentication and using different passwords for different websites can help you protect from credential stuffing brute force attacks.

Advantages and Disadvantages of a Brute Force Attack

The following are the advantages and disadvantages of a brute force attack:

• The main advantages of brute force attacks are that they are quite easy to use and by giving constant effort and time, it will always tend to work.
• A brute force attack is able to hack any password system and encryption key out there.
• On the other side, brute force attacks are exceedingly slow as they may have to perform every possible combination of characters before they achieve their target.
• This sluggishness will affect the number of characters in the target string to rise (a string is just a combination of characters).
• For example, a four-character password takes much longer than a three-character password, and a five-character password takes considerably longer than a four-character password in brute force.
• Once the number of characters reaches outside a specific point, brute force is unrealistic to crack an unusual password.

How to strengthen passwords to prevent a brute force attack?

You can do much as a user to help your digital protection. The easiest way to protect your password against attacks is to make sure you have strong passwords.

Brute force attacks rely on your password to be cracked. So, your objective is to ensure that your password slows down such attempts as much as possible since if the breach takes too long, most hackers will give up and move on.

Here are some methods you use to strengthen your passwords:

• Use passphrases or abbreviations: You can remember your passwords at your best, but not anyone who reads them can understand. If you take a passphrase approach, use the abbreviated word to build a string that only makes sense for you, such as substituting “wood” with ‘wd.’ This way you can protect yourself from becoming a victim of this attack.
• Avoid using the commonly used passwords: The most commonly used passwords should be avoided and changed regularly.
• Use unique passwords for every website: In order to prevent being a victim of credentials stuffing, you should never reuse a password. Use a new login surname and password for every website if you want to improve your network security. If one of your account’s passwords is cracked, you can be sure that your other accounts are safe.
• Use a password manager: You can install a Password manager that keeps a track of your online login information. Firstly, you have to connect to the password manager to access all your accounts. You can then create extremely long and difficult passwords for logging into all sites you visit frequently. Store them safely and you only have to remember the primary password.
• Increase password length: More the password characters, the more time the brute force bot will take to crack the password.
• Increase the complexity of passwords: It will be difficult for a brute force attack bot to crack a complex and random password.
• Multi-factor authentication: Using multi-factor authentication methods can obstruct the brute force ongoing process. So it is advised to use two-factor or multi-factor authentication.
• Captcha implementation: Captcha is a widespread human checking method on websites and is capable of stopping brute force attacks. It is recommended for an IT specialist to prevent brute force attacks in a company.

Protecting your password by making them complex and difficult is an effective way to prevent your passwords from being cracked by a brute force attack bot. It is necessary to ensure your security with password managers and multi-factor authentication.