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Understanding the Basics of Brute Force Attacks: How They Work and What You Need to Know

Samuel Cork

Updated: Nov 7, 2024

In cybersecurity, a brute force attack is a technique used to gain unauthorized access to an account through sheer persistence. When setting up an account online, you usually provide your email address and set a password. Malicious individuals, commonly referred to as hackers, employ various strategies to acquire the login details you established for accessing your account or social media platforms.


In simple terms, a brute force attack occurs when the attacker (hacker) repeatedly guesses passwords until they successfully access your account. These guesses can be automated to occur thousands of times per second.



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Who is Affected

Both organizations and individual users are affected by these types of attacks. Organizations face this threat as attackers attempt to access employees' accounts to gain further access to company resources.


Consumers and organizations are both affected by these attacks in different ways. Consumers are affected due to these attacks targeting their accounts so the attackers can gain access. The attacker may want to access the consumer's account for a variety of reasons depending on the type of account.


If the attacker gets a hold of a social media account, they will likely use the account to get more victims through phishing attempts. The attacker may also steal any personal data saved on the account. If the attacker gains access to an account that has access to certain media, such as games or movies, they may want to sell the account.


Organizations may face a different strategy from these "hackers." Their focus is on gaining entry to employee accounts to infiltrate an organization's network. Once inside, they are inclined to pilfer as much data as possible for profit on the dark web. Other potential motives could include terrorism, hacktivism, personal pride, or sheer boredom.





How to Prevent it

To protect yourself against brute force attacks, the best method is to layer security on your account. This means to create a strong password, By creating a strong passcode, it will be much harder for the attacker to guess your password. Next would be to enable Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA). This prevents the attackers from gaining access to your account even if they do get the password.

Make sure to always practice safe habits on the internet to further protect your data.


In order to safeguard both the organization and its customers from brute force attacks, it is essential to establish security protocols as a defense mechanism. To begin with, businesses should require users to set up robust passwords when registering accounts. This is commonly seen in various login forms, where users are prompted to include at least one special character and create a password that is a minimum of six characters long.


Subsequently, the organization ought to set a restricted number of login attempts to prevent thousands of guesses. For instance, the maximum number of attempts allowed should be 10 before the account is locked.

Blocking known malicious IP addresses, as well as having a captcha for suspicious behavior would also slow down the attack attempts.


How Brute Force Attacks Work

A brute force attack occurs when attackers attempt to gain unauthorized access to an account by trying various methods. Usually, they employ a program to carry out the attack on their behalf, making numerous guesses per second until successfully breaching the account.


These assumptions can be derived from a text file, a technique commonly known as a dictionary attack. Such a file may contain various methods for carrying out brute force attacks. One popular approach involves utilizing a list of frequently used passwords, which may consist of entries like P@ssw0rd, Admin, 12345, and similar options. While these choices may appear trivial, numerous online users create highly vulnerable passwords that are susceptible to such attacks.


A standard brute force attack involves attempting all conceivable character combinations in order to breach an account. While this method is time-consuming, it is not restricted to a predefined word list. Moreover, this type of attack specifically focuses on exploiting weak passwords, putting even unique but shorter passwords in jeopardy.




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