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In cryptanalysis and computer security, password cracking is the process of guessing passwords [1] protecting a computer system.A common approach (brute-force attack) is to repeatedly try guesses for the password and to check them against an available cryptographic hash of the password. [2]
Brute-force attacks work by calculating every possible combination that could make up a password and testing it to see if it is the correct password. As the password's length increases, the amount of time, on average, to find the correct password increases exponentially.
The first public release of Crack was version 2.7a, which was posted to the Usenet newsgroups alt.sources and alt.security on 15 July 1991. Crack v3.2a+fcrypt, posted to comp.sources.misc on 23 August 1991, introduced an optimised version of the Unix crypt() function but was still only really a faster version of what was already available in other packages.
Password strength is a measure of the effectiveness of a password against guessing or brute-force attacks. In its usual form, it estimates how many trials an attacker who does not have direct access to the password would need, on average, to guess it correctly. The strength of a password is a function of length, complexity, and unpredictability ...
In cryptography, key stretching techniques are used to make a possibly weak key, typically a password or passphrase, more secure against a brute-force attack by increasing the resources (time and possibly space) it takes to test each possible key. Passwords or passphrases created by humans are often short or predictable enough to allow password ...
If the attacker finds a match, they know that their guess is the actual password for the associated user. Password cracking tools can operate by brute force (i.e. trying every possible combination of characters) or by hashing every word from a list; large lists of possible passwords in many languages are widely available on the Internet. [14]
In cryptography, PBKDF1 and PBKDF2 (Password-Based Key Derivation Function 1 and 2) are key derivation functions with a sliding computational cost, used to reduce vulnerability to brute-force attacks.
It is widely used, to perform both the famous pass-the-hash attack, or also can be used to brute-force users' password directly. In order to work, it must be run under an Administrator account, or be able to access an Administrator account on the computer where the hashes are to be dumped.