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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]
Key stretching also improves security in some real-world applications where the key length has been constrained, by mimicking a longer key length from the perspective of a brute-force attacker. [1] There are several ways to perform key stretching. One way is to apply a cryptographic hash function or a block cipher repeatedly in a loop.
A brute-force attack is a cryptanalytic attack that can, in theory, be used to attempt to decrypt any encrypted data (except for data encrypted in an information-theoretically secure manner). [1] Such an attack might be used when it is not possible to take advantage of other weaknesses in an encryption system (if any exist) that would make the ...
A dictionary attack is based on trying all the strings in a pre-arranged listing. Such attacks originally used words found in a dictionary (hence the phrase dictionary attack); [2] however, now there are much larger lists available on the open Internet containing hundreds of millions of passwords recovered from past data breaches. [3]
Systems that use passwords for authentication must have some way to check any password entered to gain access. If the valid passwords are simply stored in a system file or database, an attacker who gains sufficient access to the system will obtain all user passwords, giving the attacker access to all accounts on the attacked system and possibly other systems where users employ the same or ...
Use encryption systems that document how they generate random numbers and provide a method to audit the generation process. Build security systems with off the shelf hardware, preferably purchased in ways that do not reveal its intended use, e.g. off the floor at a large retail establishment.
Brute force attacks can be made less effective by obfuscating the data to be encoded, something that makes it more difficult for an attacker to recognise when he has cracked the code. One of the measures of the strength of an encryption system is how long it would theoretically take an attacker to mount a successful brute force attack against it.
The PBKDF2 key derivation function has five input parameters: [9] DK = PBKDF2(PRF, Password, Salt, c, dkLen) where: PRF is a pseudorandom function of two parameters with output length hLen (e.g., a keyed HMAC)