Password Cracking Methods by Hackers

 

🔴 Password cracking techniques

    💠There are a number of techniques that can be used to crack passwords. We will learn about the most commonly used ones below:

 🔹 Dictionary attack – This method involves the use of a wordlist to compare against user passwords.

 🔹 Brute force attack – This method is similar to the dictionary attack. Brute force attacks use algorithms that combine alpha-numeric characters and symbols to come up with passwords for the attack. For example, a password of the value “password” can also be tried as p@$$word using the brute force attack.

 🔹 Rainbow table attack – This method uses pre-computed hashes. Let’s assume that we have a database which stores passwords as md5 hashes. We can create another database that has md5 hashes of commonly used passwords. We can then compare the password hash we have against the stored hashes in the database. If a match is found, then we have the password.

 🔹 Guess – As the name suggests, this method involves guessing. Passwords such as qwerty, password, admin, etc. are commonly used or set as default passwords. If they have not been changed or if the user is careless when selecting passwords, then they can be easily compromised.

 🔹 Spidering – Most organizations use passwords that contain company information. This information can be found on company websites, social media such as facebook, twitter, etc. Spidering gathers information from these sources to come up with word lists. The word list is then used to perform dictionary and brute force attacks.