Password Guessing Attacks, Brute Force Attack, Dictionary Attack

Another type of network attack is Password Guessing attack. Here a legitimate users access rights to a computer and network resources are compromised by identifying the user id/password combination of the legitimate user.

Password guessing attacks can be classified into two.

Brute Force Attack: A Brute Force attack is a type of password guessing attack and it consists of trying every possible code, combination, or password until you find the correct one. This type of attack may take long time to complete. A complex password can make the time for identifying the password by brute force long.

Dictionary Attack: A dictionary attack is another type of password guessing attack which uses a dictionary of common words to identify the user’s password.