What Is Brute Force Attack?

A brute force attack is a type of cyber-attack that involves trying every possible combination of passwords or passphrases until the correct one is found. This method is used by hackers to gain unauthorized access to a system or network.

A brute force attack may also be referred to as brute force cracking.

Explains Brute Force Attack

For example, a form of brute force attack known as a dictionary attack might try all the words in a dictionary. Other forms of brute force attack might try commonly-used passwords or combinations of letters and numbers.
 An attack of this nature can be time- and resource-consuming. Hence the name "brute force attack;" success is usually based on computing power and the number of combinations tried rather than an ingenious algorithm.

The following measures can be used to defend against brute force attacks:

• Requiring users to have complex passwords
• Limiting the number of times a user can attempt to log in
• Temporarily locking out users who exceed the specified maximum number of login attempts