Brute Force Attack – How to Defend Against Brute Force Attack
First of all, we have to know what a brute force attack is. It is basically a trial-and-error method. Hackers mainly use this for encryption keys, to find a hidden web page, to crack passwords, or to guess login info. It is a basic technique to gain unauthorized access to the systems. The hackers systematically check all possible passphrases and passwords until they can find the correct password. Alternatively, using a key derivation function, the hackers can guess the key. This term is called exhaustive key search. Though this is a very old attack method, it is a very popular and effective method among hackers. If the password is very weak it can take a few seconds to crack the password. But if a password is strong then it may take hours or days.
There are several types of brute force attack which are –
- Hybrid force attack – It’s usually a combination of brute force attack and dictionary attack. This method basically cracks combo passwords that mix random characters and common words.
- Credential stuffing – This attack type basically consists of password and username combination. If a person uses the same username and password combination for various accounts and social media profiles then this approach will be successful.
- Simple brute force attack – If a person uses extremely simple passwords and PINs like “Public12345” then hackers can logically guess your credentials.
- Dictionary attacks – In this method, the attacker tests possible passwords against that individual’s username after selecting a target. It is a very time-consuming method and the success rate is very low.
- Reverse brute force attack – By starting with a known password a reverse brute force attack reverses the attack strategy. The hackers use leaked passwords from existing data breaches.
- A. Time-based
- B. Boolean
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How to defend against brute force attack?
Organizations and individuals can implement several techniques for strengthening their cybersecurity against brute force attacks and safeguarding their confidential information and reducing the cybercriminal activities by using the techniques as follows –
- Use a very strong password – The best way to protect from brute force attacks is to make your target password as strong as possible. For this reason, it will be more time-consuming and difficult for hackers to guess the password. If a password length will be more than 10 characters and if it will consist of numerals, symbols, capital, and lowercase letters then it consumes more time and increases the difficulty to crack a password. You can use also elaborate passphrases, which consist of special characters with multiple words or segments. It makes it more difficult to guess a password. You can also use truncate words like “yellow” to “yl” or “red” to “rd”. So, it will be more difficult to crack them.
- Implementing multi -factor authentication- In this method when a user tries to log-in with their password, they will ask to give additional proof like a secrete-code sent via SMS on their device previously marked as trusted.
- Limiting the login attempts – When a hacker repeatedly tests username and password combinations and this method can be very effective to protect networks and systems and can able to reduce criminal activities.
- High encrypting rate – 256-bit encryption makes data protection even stronger as it exponentially increases the computing power and time required for a brute-force attack.
- Use CAPTCHA for login attempts – Manual verifications could not stop robots from brute-forcing into the data. Only captcha can prevent the brute-force attacking tools.
