A brute force attack is one of those cyberattacks that even a novice hacker can handle, But the consequences for the victims can be catastrophic. Read this article to know more about this attack, tools, and ways to protect it.
“It’s really exciting. It’s kind of like hunting, But not hunting animals, But hunting hashes. The best form of vertical missile game! ”
This is the profession of a cybersecurity expert who checks the level of security of passwords and uses brute force attacks to do so. Of course, he warns that if you use this type of attack for illegal purposes, you should also wait for the consequences.
Brute Force attack can be both one of the simplest methods of password detection with a high success rate and a relatively complex and at the same time low success method. To get acquainted with this type of cyber attack, the tools used for this attack and the methods of protection against it are included in this article.
The titles you will read in this article:
- What is a brute force attack?
- Types of brute force attacks
- Hackers target brute force attacks
- Weaknesses and strengths of brute force attacks
What is a brute force attack?
A brute force attack, also known as an Exhaustive Search attack, is one of the most common cyber attacks to find users’ passwords or hidden pages on websites.
This type of cyber attack is equivalent to this familiar scene in the movies: the door is locked and the character of the thief has key categories, But he does not know which key to unlocking the door. Time is also very tight and the landlord may arrive at any moment. That’s why the character in the movie starts trying all the keys until one of them finally unlocks the door.
The same is true of a brute force attack, except that the attacker, instead of forcing himself into the house, intends to log in to other users’ online accounts without permission. The term brute force in English means “attack by force” and this meaning is evident in this model of cyber-attack; Through this attack, the hacker guesses all the possible combinations of the desired password until he finally gets the correct answer.
Brute force attack, although it seems so simple that even very novice hackers can handle it, can be very time consuming; For example, if the website that was attacked by Brute Force used encryption keys to hide or so-called hash passwords, it may be almost impossible to detect passwords through this attack, depending on the type of encryption key. However, if the password is weak, a simple brute force attack can guess it correctly in a matter of seconds.
Types of Brute force attacks
- Simple brute force attacks
- Dictionary attacks
- Reverse brute force attacks
- Hybrid brute force attacks
- Credential Stuffing
Simple brute force attacks
In this attack model, hackers use software tools to guess and discover users’ passwords. This attack only works when the password is weak and easily guessed.
Dictionary attacks
In this type of attack, the hacker targets a specific username and, with the help of a dictionary or a list of common passwords that have been exposed in the breached attacks, begins to try each of these passwords to finally get the password associated with Reach the target username; For example, if your chosen password is 12345, this password has been detected in 2,493,390 data breaches so far, and you can be sure that it exists in all dictionaries used in brute force attacks.
Reverse brute force attacks
This attack model, as its name implies, is the opposite of a simple brute force attack; This means that the hacker does not target a specific username, but identifies a list of common passwords and matches them to millions of usernames so that he can finally match the passwords with their associated usernames.
Disclosed passwords can be easily found on the Dark Web. Hackers attack various websites, steal a list of passwords stored on their servers, and then publish it on the Dark Web. Other groups of hackers use these passwords to launch reverse brute force attacks to find the username associated with each password, to gain access to the user’s account.
Hybrid brute force attacks
In this type of attack, attackers go to advanced tools to obtain passwords that can in a shorter time and using the power of computer processors, simultaneously several possible combinations of complex passwords consisting of letters, numbers and Try the symbols to get the correct password.
Credential Stuffing
If a hacker manages to get the right combination of username and password for a website account on a website in a brute force attack. Then he will try this combination on several other websites as well. Because many users are accustomed to using a combination of usernames and passwords to log in to different websites, they become easy prey for this model of attack.
Hackers target brute force attacks
Brute force attacks are usually carried out to gain access to users’ personal information, including passwords, usernames. And pins and hackers use scripts, bots, or special software for these attacks. The goals that hackers pursue from carrying out a brute force attack include the following:
- Theft of personal information such as password or username to access online accounts and network resources
- Collection of users’ personal information for sale to third parties
- Appear as a user to send phishing links and fake content
- Damage the reputation of the organization by disclosing the information of their users
- Redirect domains to websites that contain malicious content
Of course, brute force attacks are also carried out for useful purposes. Many IT professionals use this attack model to test network security. And in particular, the strength of the encryption method used in the network to prevent possible future hacker attacks.
Weaknesses and strengths of brute force attacks
The biggest advantage of a brute force attack (from a hacker’s point of view, of course!) Is its ease of execution, and it will always be successful if there is enough time and a risk reduction strategy on the part of the user. Any system based on passwords and encryption keys can be hacked with a brute force attack. In fact, the length of time it takes for a system to infiltrate with a brute force attack is a practical measure of a system’s level of security.
However, brute force attacks are very slow, as they have to try every possible combination of characters to reach their goal. This slowness will increase as the number of password characters increases. In other words, hacking a four-character password through brute force will take longer than hacking a three-character password. And thus hacking a five-character password will be more difficult than hacking a four-character password. When the number of characters in the password exceeds a certain limit. It will be almost unrealistic to accidentally discover it by a brute attack.
Also, We will talk about another important fact of Brute Force be with us with another article.